I am lucky to live in a neighbourhood that has a real sense of community. We’ve gotten to know our neighbours and have come to count on them to help us out now and then. We’re happy to return the favour when the neighbours need our help too. My family has gotten to know an elderly Italian lady down the street, who has showered us with gifts when we lend her a hand – tomato sauce, home made pasta, and pesto, along with tomato plants and basil plants she starts from seed every spring. Most recently, she brought us a loaf of freshly made bread, which was delicious and got devoured instantly, so I asked her if she’d teach me how to make it myself.
I thought I’d go down to her house to learn how to make bread one day when she happened to be making it. She makes six loaves every week to give to her kids and grandkids. But instead, she marched up to our house with a few ingredients in hand and “we” got to work. I put the “we” in quotes because she did all the work and I happily helped by holding the bowl…..I also poured water now and then, but really, my contribution was limited. I felt like the child who’s helping mom, dad, or a grandparent – so eager to contribute that even the simple task of holding the bowl made me feel important 🙂
So here’s what we did to make bread:
The Ingredients:
Some Yeast
Some Bran
Some Salt
Lots of Flour
Water
She brought the yeast and the bran, and my kitchen supplied the rest. There are no measurements for these ingredients, because we didn’t measure anything. My neighbour has clearly become an expert at bread baking over the years, so her keen eye could estimate all of the measurements. My not so keen eyes would rewrite the ingredients to look like this:
About 2 tablespoons of yeast….we used the kind that comes as a cake or block, crumbled up into warm water
Probably 2 to 3 cups of bran
1/4 cup of salt (she poured the salt into her hand but thankfully put it in a small cup so I could see approximately how much I would need next time!)
Around 20 cups of flour – I’m guessing this amount by measuring my flour container and converting from cubic inches to cups. The entire contents of the flour container was used, plus a few more cups (or so)
About 2 litres of warm water (8 cups)
Once we got going with the dough, it quickly became clear to me that this would be a great tactile activity to do with the kids. It’s messy, it’s gooey, it’s warm…..what’s not to like? There is the inevitable clean-up to deal with, but you’ll have plenty of time for that while the bread is rising! Here’s what we did to make five yes FIVE loaves of bread:
Five bread pans ready and waiting. Grease with canola oil or other oil.
Dump the flour into a large mixing bowl, then add bran and salt. Use your hands to gently mix the dry ingredients. Make a well in the middle and start slowly adding warm water, mixing with your hands as you add. Continue mixing/kneading and adding water around the edges, incorporating more of the dry ingredients as you add water. Add the diluted yeast as well. The dough will be VERY sticky and will cling to your hands as you work. The whole process of slowly adding water and kneading took about 15 minutes. The dough will be quite sticky but not wet. When all of the dry ingredients have thoroughly been incoroporated, finish kneading, sprinkle with flour, and cover.
Now, when I say cover I mean really cover the dough and keep it nice and warm. We used a tea towel, then a clean baby blanket, then another towel, a knitted afghan, and finally a large square of thick clean burlap. That dough was really nice and cozy. Let it rise for 1.5 to 2 hours – when you gently press it with your finger it should spring back.
Once the dough has rested, unwrap the blankets and divide it into portions. You can use a knife to cut off a large segment of dough, then knead on a floured surface for a couple minutes. Press your hands into flour every now and then as you knead, so that the dough won’t stick to you. Shape dough into a log and place in an oiled baking pan. We used canola oil to grease our pans. My neighbour kneaded four of the portions into logs for the pans, and I did the last one. Relatively speaking, I did a terrible job. Most of the dough I worked with ended up stuck to my counter, or on my hands, and my ‘kneads’ weren’t nearly as effective as hers. She was extremely patient and very helpful in teaching me to properly use the heel of my hand. I thought I’d be able to handle the task well enough, but clearly I will need some practice. I took this as a reminder for when I do new things with my kids – for me, the ‘teacher’ in most scenarios, it seems easy, but for them, the ‘students’ it’s new and it takes time……and patience on my part!
When the dough is in the baking pans, cover the pans well (again we used towels, blankets, and burlap) and let rise for 1 hour. 
Uncover, slash tops with a knife, and bake at 350 for 1 hour.
Towards the end (about 5 minutes) remove the loaves from pans and let them continue to bake directly on oven racks.
Remove from oven and let cool. My neighbour said to put a towel over the bread while it cools, to keep it nice and soft. You can freeze the loaves you’re not going to use right away. Enjoy!!
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