“Loaf”ing Around

Crash’s homework for religion class last week was to bake bread. His teacher had given him a simple recipe for it. There was no school yesterday, except for mom. She had school. Since she was out, I figured this would be the best time to make a mess worthy of three boys.

But first we cleaned. I managed to get Crash to do six chores. Six in ONE DAY!! Bang did five! Naturally, they were hoping our first chore would be to bake bread. Too bad, so sad.

But I’m not here today to tell you about the chores. I want to tell you about making bread. And I’m going to start nearly three years back…

[Flashback]

My parents traveled up to Canadaland in June of 2013. Bang would just be turning two. Crash 6. My mom wanted to make some bread with Crash while his baby brother napped. They had a blast.

And the bread was yummy. It didn’t last long. So you can imagine Crash’s excitement when it was time to do this again. Sans Nana, this time.

• 6 cups flour
• 4 Tbsp shortening
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 1 Tbsp instant yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 3/4 cups very warm water

I measured it all out they dumped it all in.

Then it was time to knead. Bang didn’t want to get his fairy fingers all messy so he opted out of the kneading. Crash couldn’t wait to get his hands in there. So, as in the picture on the right with Nana, we doused our handing in vegetable oil and began kneading. We squeezed. We squished. We pinched all the lumps out. We laughed at how messy our hands were.

This mess, of course, ended up on the table where we finished kneading the bread (which is far different than the “kneeing the bread” Bang wanted to do).

Then we let it rise. Since they were allowed on the tablet for a half hour, we let it rise for a half hour. We probably should have waited the full hour. Hindsight.

We separated it into two loaf pans, stuck in the 350F preheated oven and set the timer for another half hour.

After they baked for a half hour, they looked done to us. We removed them from the oven, set them on a wire rack to cool then went to library.

*Sidenote: This has nothing with bread. At the library we got one of our favorite books – “Everybody Poops”.

Anyway, after we walked there and walked home the bread was cool enough to eat. Bang didn’t like. No surprise there. Crash loved it and ate three buttered slices.

Our next objective is try making potato bread… Mmmmmm