Students learn to bake bread for donation

FARMINGTON – The bread-making homework assignment given to all Mt. Blue Middle School students comes with extra special credit: their homemade loaves will be donated to families in need.

Gina Ciancia of The King Arthur Flour Company from Norwich, Vt., taught 371 seventh- and eighth-grade students how to make bread today. Students will then use their new-found skill and ingredients donated by the flour company to bake their own loaves this weekend for donation to the Care & Share Food Closet on Monday.

The Life Skills Bread Baking Program sponsored by the flour company was brought to MBMS by the students participating in the after-school culinary class, Now You’re Cookin’  Cookery Company. The timing of the bread donation couldn’t be better as area food pantries prepare to help hundreds of local families have a happier Thanksgiving a week from today. 

In a step by step lesson, Ciancia, with help from MBMS’ Cookery Company students Adrienne Chandler and Sarah Loewen, demonstrated the dough-making process. The 2 cups of water to be mixed with yeast needs to be warm enough “to wake up the yeast,” she said. Stirring the water and yeast with 1/4 cup sugar added, she described the mixture as looking like muddy water. “It smells pretty bad too. So you’ve got smelly, muddy-looking water now,” Giancia said smiling.

The 2 cups flour to be added should be poured into a measuring cup and not dug out of a bag because that compacts the flour too much to allow for air pockets. Next, oil for a softer loaf consistency, 1 tablespoon salt for flavor and the nice brown color after baking are added.

“It looks like oatmeal now,” Ciancia said. Three more cups flour are added the students stir and fold and stir the increasingly stiff mixture.

“You’ve got to build that gluten,” she urged them on with. Gluten, provides the structure, seen first as an elastic, “rubberbandy, wait that’s not a word,” she said laughing. The dough is ready for its first rest “to let it relax” when it springs back after a finger poke.  The dough ball is dumped into an oil-coated bowl, covered with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and left to rise to about twice its size in a warm, draft-free place.

At about a hour and half later, the relaxed dough is ready when its punched down and doesn’t respond for forming into a loaf shape. Ciancia demonstrates three loaf shapes including a classy-looking braided variety. After a second rest of 30 minutes, the loaves are “docked” or cut across the top “to tell it where to breathe,” she said, which prevents unsightly cracks if left up to the loaf to decide where the steam will escape during baking.

The cooking class ended with other yummy options for the dough demonstrated: cinnamon rolls and pizza dough. The students will all be given the ingredients to make two loaves of bread, one to keep and one to bring back on Monday for donation.

The King Arthur Flour Company says it has taught more than 100,000 fourth- through middle school-age students over the last decade how to bake bread through this program. Three years ago, students at MBMS participated in the same program and donated more than 300 loaves to the food pantry, said Alyce Cavanaugh, the school’s health coordinator. 

Students going home and making bread from scratch for their families and the community is all about sharing. It also incorporates a fair amount of science and math.

“Cooking is such a great thing for them to learn,” Cavanaugh said.