Baking bread is a useful life skill with lots of room for other skills and learning opportunities. You should certainly plan to bake some bread while studying it, but it can be frozen bread dough from the grocery store, or our favorite multigrain sourdough recipe, shared below, or anything in between.
Multigrain Sourdough Bread
- 1/2 cup sourdough starter
- 2/3 c. warm water
- 1 T honey
- 1/3 c. olive oil or soft butter
- 1 egg
- 3 c. flour (we use 1 cup each of bread flour, whole wheat flour, and Harvest Grains blend)
- 1 T yeast
Put ingredients into your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Choose the dough cycle if you want to shape rolls or a loaf yourself, or choose “whole grain” and let the machine do it all for you!
Getting started
Enjoy our slideshow of different kinds of bread we’ve made together as a family. How many do you recognize? Which of your favorites have we missed?
If you’re baking bread, go ahead and get it started. That may mean putting the ingredients in the bread machine, or it may mean putting frozen rolls in the oven. Either way, you’ll get the wonderful smell of fresh bread to enjoy while you learn!
English: detailed reading
Relaxed free reading for fun is great, but it is also important to read closely with an eye toward details, thinking about different points that come up in your book. We like picture books for practice with these skills, since you can look for details in the pictures as well as the words.
We like The Bakery Dragon by Devin Elle Kurtz for this unit. It’s the story of Ember, a baby dragon. It begins with the words, “There is nothing a dragon loves more than gold.” Ember admires the bigger dragons’ hoards of gold, but they get their gold by stealing it from the villagers. Ember tries to do this, too, but is not successful. Instead of being frightened, they just think Ember is adorable. When he gets caught in a storm, he ends up taking shelter in a bakery — where the baker puts him to work.
He goes home with plenty of golden bread rolls, and the other dragons are impressed. They return to the bakery with Ember and use their gold to buy bread. “There is nothing a dragon loves more than gold,” the book concludes, “But sit turns out…baking gold is better than taking it. And sharing it is best of all.”
Read the book aloud and discuss the overall story and main point of the book. Then go back and look more closely.
Detailed reading
- Pages 1-2: We meet Ember and learn of the dragons’ love for gold. Are there other stories that tell of dragons hoarding gold? (yes)
- Pages 3-4: We see a dragon hoard of gold, but it includes some strange things, like a golden toilet. Would that be useful? Look closely at the illustrations and decide whether everything belongs there. Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice contains the line, “All that glisters is not gold…” What does that mean? (We shouldn’t decide on a thing’s value based on the look of it.)
- Pages 7-8: We see Ember trying unsuccessfully to scare people, and the dragons coming home with their treasures. Note the many different shapes of dragons. Are dragons in traditional folklore that varied? (Usually the different shapes of dragons come from stories told in different countries.)
- Pages 21-22: The baker invites Ember to help her, but asks him to wash his hands first. Why? (To avoid contamination of the bread. Learn more about handwashing with an experiment involving unwashed hands.)
- Pages 23-24: The baker shows Ember how to knead the bread, saying, “Push with your whole body.” Try kneading bread dough, or Model Magic.
- Pages 29-30: We see Ember flying home with a hoard of golden bread rolls. He falls asleep on his hoard, as dragons do, but the smell encourages him to taste the delicious bread. The illustration gives us some clues about where in the world might have inspired the story. What parts of the picture could give clues? (The mountains, the closely built town, the tiled roofs, and the timber-framed houses suggest an Alpine village.) What countries might look something like this? (Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and even Northern Italy are near the Alps.)
- Pages 31-32: Identify all the adjectives on this page. Do you agree that they make up a good description of bread? Notice that they describe the experience of eating the bread using different senses.
- Pages 33-34: The dragons are willing to buy the bread, but the baker isn’t so sure she wants to deal with them. Why? (They’re known to be thieves.)
- Pages 35-36: The words on the pages don’t say exactly what happened. What in the pictures gives the whole story? (Ember opens the bag and gold spills out, convincing the baker to allow them in…if they wash their hands. The dragons’ faces show that they don’t know about handwashing.)
- Pages 37-40: We see Ember skillfully making bread and the dragons joyfully feasting on different shapes of bread, paying the baker, and finally coming back to share the bread — and their gold — with the villagers. Did the dragons’ behavior change their relationships with the villagers? (Definitely. Â They gained trust, became part of the lawful economy instead of the criminal underworld, and made friends with the villagers.)
- Pages 39-40: This spread ends the story and shows a clear view of the village. Again we see the pointed mountain and another view of the buildings and people in the village. Are there more clues to what kind of real location this illustrator might have had in mind while drawing the fantasy village? (We can see that the name of the bakery is written in English and the name of the baker is “Bea.” This might suggest an English-speaking location. However, the clothing and architecture have a more continental European feel. The illustrator is not trying to portray a real country.)
The Bakery Dragon makes a good read-aloud for young children and a good detailed reading lesson for older students as well, Â but here are some more books on bread to try:
- Everybody Bakes Bread by Norah Dooley is a wonderful way to think about what people have in common and what is special about each of us. All around the world, people make bread — and the variety of kinds of bread in different places is impressive. This book looks at examples of that variety in one neighborhood.
- Loaves of Fun: A History of Bread with Activities and Recipes from Around the World
- Bread Lab! by Kim Binczewski
- All You Knead Is Love by Tanya Guerrero is the story of 12-year-0ld Alba, who feels banished from her family and friends in New York when her mother sends her to Barcelona to live with her grandmother. Alba — and the book — deal with a lot of touch issues, and learning to bake bread in the traditional way is one of the tools that helps her manage it.
Dragon folklore
Check out some dragon books and learn about the two main kinds of dragon folklore:
Lifeskills
Baking bread
With the recipe above and a bread machine, baking bread is easy. If you’d like more resources on baking from scratch, check out our Spring Break baking post. It gives you what you need at any time of year.
Food safety
Food-borne illnesses affect nearly ten million Americans every year. Here are basic food safety rules:
- Stay clean, and keep your kitchen clean, too. That includes washing your hands, washing utensils, cleaning countertops, and using a fresh kitchen towel every day. It’s also good to keep your hair tied back or under a scarf or cap.
- Keep hot foods hot and cold foods cold. This doesn’t usually affect baking bread, but it’s good to keep in mind. Hot foods should go into the fridge within two hours of serving and be eaten or thrown away after four days. Cold foods should be refrigerated, and should go back in the fridge within the same two hours. As for raw flour, never eat it. That goes for dough, batter, or anything containing raw flour.
- Cook things thoroughly. That includes bread.
The best way to teach this is to provide an example and to remind kids when they’re cooking and baking with you — just like the baker in The Bakery Dragon.
Social studies
European geography
Learning geography is all about rich context. Studying bread is a great way to provide that rich context. We’ve seen a lot of different kinds of bread in our European travels.
A German bakery carries many kinds of delicious bread. Many Germans go to the bakery every day for fresh bread.
A special Jewish bakery in France. In France, bread is usually bought at bakeries every day.
Sandwich bread in France.
A seeded roll in Spain.
Flatbread in Greece.
We could keep going, but it should be clear that there are many, many kinds of bread in Europe. There are also many languages and many cultures in Europe. So, while we can think of Europe as an entire continent and the European Union functions much as the United States does, it’s worth getting to know a little more about Europe.
We like to think about geography from the point of view of the 5 Themes of Geography:
- Location
- Region
- Place  (physical and human characteristics)
- Human-Environment Interaction
- Movement
You can get a good overview of European geography with one simple (or not-so-simple, as we’ll see) project: identify the regions of Europe.
If you look up “regions of Europe,” you can find lists of as few as four or as many as 17. Experts don’t agree on this, so it’s a great opportunity for research and problem-solving. Here are some of the ways you might approach the question.
Define a region by culture and history.
The nations of Scandinavia have so much in common when it comes to culture, history, and language, that they have a widely-used regional name. The three Scandinavian nations everyone agrees on are these:
- Denmark
- Norway
- Sweden
However, it makes sense to us to include Finland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands as well. These nations together are also called the Nordic countries.
Find them on your world map or globe. Learn a bit more about them:
Do you agree that these nations together form a region?
Some people choose a simpler approach, dividing the continent of Europe into just four regions, based on location.
Define a region by location.
The United Nations Geoscheme puts Scandinavia and the rest of the Nordic Nations into Northern Europe.
These are the countries shown in color on the map above:
- The Nordic Countries:
- Denmark
- Finland
- Iceland
- Norway
- Sweden
- The Baltic States:
- Estonia
- Latvia
- Lithuania
- The British Isles:
- United Kingdom
- England
- Scotland
- Wales
- Northern Ireland
- Ireland
- United Kingdom
Find all these countries on the map. You already learned a bit about  the Nordic countries. Learn a bit more about the United Kingdom:
If you use this approach, you’ll also have Southern Europe, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe. Use the map of Europe and the U.N. Geoscheme to sort all the nations of Europe into the four regions. That may be the simplest way, but is it the best? Consider one more option before you decide.
Define a region by physical characteristics
You can also think of Europe in terms of its major physical features. Then you could have the Alpine region around the Alps. We’d include Germany, Switzerland, and Austria in that region, although Italy also has an Alpine area.We’d be inclined to put Italy in the Mediterranean, a region centered around the Mediterranean Sea. You’ll notice that not all the Mediterranean countries are in Europe. Just as we didn’t include Greenland among the Nordic countries or in Northern Europe, we wouldn’t include the North African nations in the Mediterranean region of Europe. Turkey? Not everyone agrees on that.
Learn a little more about these countries:
- FreshPlans Goes to Paris
- Christmas in France
- Spain: A Country Study
- Christmas in Spain
- Spanish Music
- FreshPlans Goes to Rome
- Ancient Rome
- Ancient Greece
You can also identify the British Isles, the Baltic nations, the Arctic countries, and more in this way.
Make a decision
Use a blank map of Europe for the next part of the project. Label the nations of Europe. How many can you recognize by now? Find the rest on the maps above or on your world map or globe.
Write the names of all the nations on individual index cards or Post-It Notes. Sort them into groups, using the criteria above or other points that you think of. Try different options and choose the one you think is the best. This can be a group task, or each student can do their own.
Go back to your map and color-code the regions you’ve decided on. Now, give each student a copy of a blank map of Europe. Choose one of your regions and read off the countries. Have students find that country on the blank map. For example, if you defined the Mediterranean region as all the European nations on the Mediterranean, you’d list Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, and Greece. If you chose to define this region by culture, you might have a different list. Either way, you might choose to include Turkey, which straddles Asia and Europe.
Take time in common days to learn a little more about countries the students couldn’t place and to try the assessment again. Once all students have fully labeled the first region, move on to the next one. Remember rich context, and plan to celebrate when all the countries of Europe are familiar to your group.
Math
Measuring
Baking is a perfect way to practice measurement. Baking bread requires many different types of measurement:
- Volume, in cups and tablespoons
- Weight, which expert bakers use for ingredients
- Temperature, when you set the temperature of the oven and choose a warm place to let the bread rise, and maybe also when you test for a good bake with an instant-read thermometer
- Length, when you shape your bread either according to a recipe or to fit in your bread pan
- Time, when you check your bread after the right amount of time in the rising bowl and in the oven
If these are new ideas for the students, introduce them. If you’ve already studied these concepts, this is a great time to practice. Let the kids measure ingredients, set the oven temperature, shape the bread, and set a timer for baking.
William is our best baker, so it’s no surprise that he weighs his ingredients and uses a thermometer to make sure his bread is baked enough. We’re showing off one of his beautiful loaves below. No matter what your bread looks like, though, you can learn a lot from studying bread!
Combinatorics
Combinatorics is the part of math that figures out how to work with combinations. For example, you can make our basic bread recipe (above) with different kinds of flour. We use three kinds of flour, but there are many choices. For example, you could use white flour, wheat flour, and rye flour or wheat flour, potato flour, and oats. If you know the number of types of flour you have and the number of choices to be made, you can use combinatorics to calculate how many options you have.
Add more variables to increase the number of combinations. For example, we made Turkish rolls with feta and parsley (left) and also sweet rolls with fig jam (right). Â Count the number of ingredients you could use to fill your bread and the number of shapes you could make — your total number of options will grow remarkably.
Sandwiches are a perfect way to understand combinatorics! Check out Combinatorics for Breakfast to see combinations of bread, eggs, and fruit, too.
Download our Bread Unit Study Math Assessment Worksheet by clicking on the link below. You may print it out and copy it for your classroom or group.
Wrap-up
Bring out The Bakery Dragon and consider some questions as you read through it.
- Looking at the pictures of dragons, do they look like European folklore or Chinese folklore dragons?
- Looking at the baker and the bakery, what food safety steps do you notice?
- Looking at the village and the villagers, which region of Europe do you think inspired the author/illustrator?
- Is there any measurement in story?
- We only saw one type of bread dough, but there are many shapes of bread. We also saw different colors of bread. If we guess that the baker makes dark, light, and enriched breads, can you count the different shapes and calculate how many types of bread she sells?
