Bake Like A Phoenician

Thing 4 has been studying ancient Hebrew and Phoenician cultures over the past few weeks. Today, we made flat bread, which was most likely a staple in the diets of people of both cultures.

(How's that for product placement? It was purely accidental. I'm really not getting paid by the Gold Medal people.)

One thing I really appreciate about Oak Meadow is that they give me a lesson to teach and then give me two or three activities to reinforce that lesson. It's working so well for us.

She thought it was kind of magical the way they ballooned in the oven:

And then flattened out as they cooled:

This was her favorite part:

Butter Making

What better to go with homemade bread than homemade butter?

We learned that when fresh milk is left standing, it separates into heavy cream on top and skim milk on bottom. Heavy cream is full of fat and protein. When you shake the cream long enough, the fat globules stick together forming butter and leaving behind buttermilk.

We shook.

And shook.

And then I shook a whole lot more but no one captured that on film.

We decided we needed a little music to shake to, so I took the opportunity to introduce them to yet another song from my childhood, and we shook our booties and our butter with KC and the Sunshine Band playing on the computer. (And, for the record, I knew that song well before The Simpons were around. As I have mentioned, I am o.l.d.)

Finally, we had butter and buttermilk!

If you break a sweat while making butter, does it mean you're out of shape? Just asking...

Bread Making - Four Subjects, One Lesson!

In history, we are studying Babylonia..."a rich land where there was no money". Thanks to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers creating rich soil, Babylonia was rich because many good food crops grew there. Historians believed that wheat was first grown there.

That was history.

Before we made the bread, we learned about yeast...what it is, what it's job is in bread dough, and how it works. We learned that yeast is a single-cell fungus that "comes to life" when it is put in warm water. We used a thermometer (that was math!) to be sure we had the perfect water temperature because if the water is too hot, the yeast will die. Like all living organisms, yeast needs food to survive. Yeast's food of choice is sugar. When the sugar is consumed, the yeast releases carbon dioxide bubbles, causing the bread to rise.

I wanted to give the children a visual of what, exactly, happens during the fermentation process. So before we started making the bread, we put some yeast, sugar and warm water in a bottle and placed a balloon over the top. As the yeast fermented and released carbon dioxide (which we learned is a gas), the balloon inflated. (My children made the observation that yeast, like people, burp and pass gas when they eat. What are you going to do?)

That was science.

And then it was time to make the bread. The children took turns sifting, measuring (math again!), mixing, kneading, punching and forming.

That was cooking class.

Thing 4 couldn't resist drawing in the flour.

I counted that as a bonus art class for her.

Finally, we had two beautiful, if imperfect, loaves of bread. One for us and one to share with friends.

Who needs a bread machine?