Making Bread on a Rainy Afternoon

July 7th, 2010

Making Bread on a Rainy Afternoon

One thing I always enjoyed as a child, was baking with my dad. My great-grandmother taught him to bake, and he passed the enjoyment down to me. As I got older my parents allowed me to bake on my own despite the mess – and enjoyed the finished project no matter how lopsided or odd looking. :)

So a couple of weeks ago on a rainy Thursday – I thought this would be a good day to introduce baking to Sophie.

The recipe we used was for simple, easy whole wheat bread found in the book “Heaven on Earth” by Sharifa Oppenheimer (on a side note: I cannot say enough about this book. It resonated with me on so many levels, and gave me many tools as to how to parent creatively in every situation, good or bad!)

Starting off with the wet ingredients. Sophie is only two, and you can expect a two-year old to make a mess! But with the proper guidance the mess can be kept to a minimum. This was a good time for me to practice using positive words rather than focus on the negative – instead of saying “don’t spill it” I would say – “stir slowly, keep it in the bowl” – this takes patience and thought before words, which is particularly hard for me when it is second nature to focus on the negative. Mindful parenting means just that – taking the time to stop and think of our words and actions. How will my words impact my child? I can remember how those words affected me – as harmless as they were meant when I was little (this by no means is a perfect practice for me – there are always bad days. You simply have to reflect, forgive yourself and strive to do better the next day. It is a journey that I will take with my children – together there will be ups and downs!). .

Slowly adding the dry ingredients – the dough is starting to thicken now…

Ava was happy to explore and play on her own – and would come over to the table to see what we were doing every so often…

Our dough is now the consistency of pizza dough and is ready to be formed. You could do a lot of things with this – cut with cookie cutters of different animal shapes, braid the dough, form it into a loaf of bread…I decided it would be the easiest for Sophie to simply form them into balls and make rolls out of them.

The finished product…

A tasty bedtime snack. The honey in this recipe makes them irresistible. :)

I would really like to try weaving a story into our cooking…I think it would add an element of fantasy/creativity as well as help explain the elements involved (such as mixing, and keeping it in the bowl or forming the dough into balls). Story telling is one aspect of my parenting that I really want to work on. It doesn’t come natural to me – yet anyway. ;)