A Story in a Loaf of Bread
Baking bread with children can be one of the most rewarding experiences, second only to the joy of eating it. We take it one step further by drawing a story into the experience.
Stories help us tie our imaginations into the web of reality at our fingertips, in this case the dough. By listening to a story and helping in the kitchen, we bake a complex experience out of remarkably simple ingredients, a process we call the Storytelling Loop.
The Storytelling Loop is a journey we take with our kids. We start with something real (like dough), then “plant” a story in it. When we finish, our kids are left with something very real that sparks their memories and imaginations. Play is often a further component, as children commonly repeat or act out the story with a favorite doll or stuffy. Tasting the fresh baked bread makes this experience one of the richest.
In This Episode
Learn how to bake bread as a storytelling experience
Watch the video to see an example
As the dough rises, listen to the recorded story of “Baker Lou & The Mouse King,” or tell your own
Explore how storytelling can change your relationship to the ingredients. Can you see each ingredient - water, honey, grain, and salt - as a character in your story?
In the Story (Told as the Bread Rises)
When the children go to visit Baker Lou, they discover that he has no flour! Instead, he tells the story of how the Mouse King helped his grandfather build his first bakery. In the retelling, Baker Lou remembers what he had forgotten: to be grateful.
The story helps us remember our own bread-baking ancestors and all the generations that baked bread before us. It reminds us, just like the grandfather in the story who cried his tear over his little loaf of bread, that small deeds sometimes feed generations.
After the Story
Return to your bread dough. Now it is ready to be shaped and put into the oven. You can recall once more all the ingredients that went into the bread: the mountain
of flour, the yeast, honey, and warm water that made the volcano, the salt in the four directions, the stream and oil surrounding the volcano (see the video).
These images invite children to see a whole world in the ball of dough we have created. While the bread bakes, we can call the clean up mice (which are the hands of the children) to help sweep and wipe the counter.
How to Knead a Story Into the Bread
Ingredients
6-7 cups Flour
2 tsp Yeast
3 cups Warm Water
2 tsp Honey
1/3 cup oil or melted butter
4 tsp Salt
Optional: Sunflower, Poppy, or Sesame Seeds
Instructions
Pour flour into a large bowl and shape into a mountain
Dissolve yeast & honey in 1 cup of warm water, then pour into the center of your flour mountain
Let yeast mixture rise for 10 - 15 min
Add salt, oil, and 2 more cups of water
Mix, knead, and shape the dough
Let rise for 20-30 min in a warm location (and tell your story)
Knead once more and place it on a baking sheet
Bake in preheated over at 325 F for one hour
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Cover photo by Wesual Click on UnSplash
