Once upon a time there was a teacher named Ms. Anderson who wanted her first grade class to bake bread. She worked at a school in the past whose students baked bread every week and she wanted to do this at Crocker Highlands, too.  She imagined her students measuring, kneading, and eating their own bread and she imagined all the writing, reading, math, and science they could do together.

She was nervous (new things can be tricky) but in January of 2009 she started “Bread Baking Mondays.”  How hard could it be?

Abriella, Adam, Andrew, Angie, Colin, Dylan, Francesca, Isaac, Je’Lani, Jessie, John, Kaylen, Mira, Miranda, Noe, Olivia, Renzo, Sophia, Spencer, and Sydney were eager and willing bakers, ready to make Ms. Anderson’s bread dreams come true.  It was the perfect class which with to “take the plunge” because they were kind, flexible, resilient, and responsible learners (just like Gumby).  Ms. Anderson also had another lucky charm: Lisa Ter-razas.  Lisa bravely agreed to lead the bread making every Monday morn-ing with 10 students while Ms. Anderson would conduct reading groups with the others. Like Ms. Anderson, Lisa had not done much home bread making.   Another kind parent, Hilary Stoermer, agreed to prepare the bread for eating every Monday afternoon and has since been “roped in” to reading a bread folk tale every Monday, too.  Other parents generously do-nated ingredients and cooking tools to make the dream possible.

Here is the story of our bread.

On January 12, we baked our first loaves.  Lisa and the students dove in.  They mixed yeast with warm water and then added the flour, sugar, and salt.  The students treated the dough like modeling clay and pounded it hard.  Not surprisingly, the dough did not rise and we baked two loaves that looked to Ms. Anderson like bricks.  The students were thrilled and Adam called it, “a little strip of heaven,” in his Bread Journal.  Ms. Anderson se-cretly thought, “We could do better…”

On February 2, we baked our second loaves.  Ms. Anderson called an ex-perienced baker and got a different recipe: 5 cups of flour, 2 tablespoons of sugar, 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 package of yeast, and 2 1/2 cups of warm water.  Ms. Anderson dissolved the yeast in the warm water before school started so that the yeast would have time to bubble.  Lisa was brave again and led 10 new bakers through the recipe, saying that it went a little better.  The dough did not rise much, but again, the students were delighted with the bread because, “we made it.”  Ms. Anderson secretly thought, “We could do better…”

After each tasting, the students brainstormed describing words and then wrote in their Bread Journals.  We also discussed the science of yeast, temperature effects, and measurement amounts.  We agreed that their second loaves were “dense, chewy, squishy, sticky, moist, filling, springy, bendable, moldable, thick, and yeasty.”  Could we get some holes in the bread?  Could we see through a slice?”  This was our challenge.

On February 23, we baked our third loaves.  We followed the same recipe and had the first group of students baking again, improving their kneading technique of “fold, push, and turn 1/4”.  Later, as we ate the bread, Miranda exclaimed, “This bread is very salty!”  Ms. Anderson tasted a slice and Miranda was right!  What happened?  Well, Ms. Anderson copied the rec-ipe wrong when she wrote it out for Lisa.  Ms. Anderson had finally made a nice big chart for Lisa and the students to follow that said:  2 tablespoons salt, 1 tablespoon sugar  instead of 2 tablespoons sugar,1 tablespoon salt.  The students ate the bread anyway and some even liked the saltier bread better.  Ms. Anderson secretly said to herself, “I must get my life together!” and wrote “oops” on the recipe chart.

On March 2, we baked our fourth loaves.  Ms. Anderson had a brilliant idea (if I may say so myself).  As you know, our dough was not rising, even though Ms. Anderson was putting it in the sunshine or near the classroom heater.  Dough needs warmth to rise.  One day, Ms. Anderson walked into the downstairs adult bathroom.  It was like a sauna in there!  Bingo!  Let’s put our dough in here!  A few students were horrified and worried that our bread would taste like poop but most students were excited about the sci-entific experiment.  We really wanted some holes in our bread!

Guess what?  It worked…a little.  The bread dough did rise, but not enough.  It was winter and the class discussed how the rising might be different in the spring or summer.  We just didn’t have all day to let the dough rise like we might if we baked at home.  School lets out at 3:00!

Ms. Anderson got tough and googled, “Rapid Rise Yeast.”  Let’s get this party started, already.

On March 16, we baked our fifth loaves.  Things were going to be different.  Rapid rise yeast is mixed with the dry ingredients and the dough “rests” for 10 minutes before you shape the loaves instead of rising for 2 hours.  By accident, Ms. Anderson told Lisa to add 2 packages of rapid rise yeast so it rose and rose and rose!  Ms. Anderson though this was great.

The class is using the somewhat old and cranky school oven which heats unevenly.  Ms. Anderson worries about burning the crust and has been ac-cidently slightly undercooking the bread which adds to the squishy, dense texture of our previous slices.  This needs to be fixed.

That day she served the bread proudly anyway.  Remember, the dough fi-nally rose!  Francesca exclaims about her slice, “It smells like wine!”  (Her parents are wine makers.)  This leads to an interesting discussion on fer-mentation.  A few minutes later, four students out of twenty took a bite and gave the bread back.  No one had ever said no to our bread before!  The four students reported, “It’s tasteless.”  And they were right, it was taste-less.  Now what was going on?!?

Back to the drawing board..

On March 23, we baked our sixth loaves.  Ms. Anderson had been giving this a lot of thought.  She turns to her 7 year old bakers for help.  What should we do?  The bakers reply:

1.  One package of rapid rise yeast only.  This might help the taste.

2.  How about making three loaves instead of two?  This might help get a cooked loaf without a burnt crust.

3.  Renzo suggests we lower the oven temperature and cook the loaves a little longer.

4.  Ms. Jang (our teacher friend) says we need a cooling rack.  Leav-ing the loaves in the pans is not a way to get the right texture, she teaches us.

Ms. Anderson sent the bakers down to the multi-use room to work so that they could make as much noise as they wanted without disturbing the readers and so that they would be near a sink.  Lisa and Ms. Anderson checked in as they always did after the dough was made.  Lisa reported that the microwave downstairs was more powerful and that the water was heated up to 140 degrees.  “Oh,” Ms. Anderson said, “The website said that 140 degrees is the temperature at which yeast is killed!”  They laughed and wondered what would happen…

That afternoon, magic came to Room 8.  Not all of the yeast was killed be-cause the junior bakers baked airy, light, fluffy “strips of heaven” full of bread flavor (not wine flavor!).  We added new attributes to our Bread Jour-nal List:  normal, holey, bouncy, and fluffy. We spread butter and jam on the slices and congratulated ourselves on our best bread yet.  Now we’re cooking…watch out Arizmendi!

This is where our story leaves off.  Our seventh loaves are still in the future.  Ms. Anderson is planning to make another change: spread melted butter on top of the loaves before baking.  What will this do to effect our bread?

Stay tuned…