Making FRIENDSHIP Bread and sharing with Friends

This post originally appeared on January 29, 2011. 

M, M and I have been hard at work preparing friendship bread to pass around to a couple of our closest pals.  The batter was not ready until yesterday.  Now that we have baked our bread and handed the project over to the next bakers I am ready to share the lesson plan.

Making the friendship bread starter

what you need: Recipe for the starter ~ ziploc bags ~ a little patience

We mixed up the starter 10 days ago while Little M’s cousin TL was visiting for the day.  They had a lot of fun adding in the ingredients.
And stirring them up. . .look at that teamwork!

After cleaning up their little mess, we set the bowl of batter on the counter and waited.  A lot happened on the first day.  The starter bubbled, it doubled in size, and looked like the beautiful dough starter I would expect.  The second day was a different story.
The starter looked flat, yucky and kind of sad.  I was worried that I had “killed” the yeast some how, but I kept it up. . .after all this post HAD to be ready Saturday (see what I go through for you. . .hee hee).  We followed the directions and had great discussions on what we saw, and smelled!  By the end the kids held their nose on the way to stir.

We choose to make our starter into chocolate muffins.  Yum they sure are tasty!

Questions (to ask your kids):  “What is happening to the dry ingredients when we add  milk?”  “What do you think will happen to the starter over the next ten days?  Was your hypothesis correct?”  “Tell me which ingredients we are using for this bread.”

Tips (to maximize learning): 1. Add a science journal to this activity by grabbing a notebook and recording data everyday.  Keep it simple, write the words your kids use to describe how the batter looks, smells, and moves when stirred.   2.  To make dividing the batter into bags easier, use a cup to hold the ziploc bag.  Add 1 cup of batter and simply pull the bag out and seal it up.

Making the delivery

what you need:  paper ~ friendship poems ~ friendship bread instructions ~ friends

Little M helped me put together the friendship bread kits.  I even let her have a turn with the sharpie. . .YIKES was that scary.  We attached the friendship poems that M and M wrote earlier in the week and the friendship bread instructions.   We tied them up with a pretty pink ribbon and set off to make our deliveries.
I let the Mommies know we were coming. . . this isn’t the kind of thing you want to leave on someone’s doorstep.  To make the drive a little more fun I packed a lunch for M and M to eat in the car (shhhh. . . don’t tell daddy.)

For each family Big M handed them a plate with muffins we made with the starter and Little M handed them our home made batter kit.

What a great ending to our Friendship Week!