Bread making ABCs: it's something any kid can do - and so can you - includes related articles on measurements and yeast

Vegetarian Times, Sept, 1997 by Nancy Ross Ryan

In 1992, Jim Bernard, a science teacher at Killingly Intermediate School in Dayville, Conn., had a bright idea: Instead of just telling his students about yeast, why not show them what happens when the living, single-celled organism is fed? Bernard knew perfectly well that if you give yeast three simple things -- moisture, food (starch and sugar) and a nice, warm environment, it begins to busily convert its food, through fermentation, into alcohol and carbon dioxide. In bread baking, that gas is trapped in tiny bubbles in the bread dough, causing it to rise. Bernard thought if he could give his students yeast, flour and some basic instructions, they could actually see this process with their own eyes -- so he contacted King Arthur, a 200-year-old flour company in nearby Norwich, Vt., and asked for some support.

In response to his request, they sent him not only the ingredients needed to prepare yeast dough in class but enough for each student to make two loaves of bread at home. They also sent Michael Jubinsky, a baker, to instruct the kids and gave students an incentive to practice baking at home: They asked them to bring in one of the two home-baked loaves to donate to ;local food kitchen for the needy.

The program was a huge success and generated extensive word-of-mouth. King Arthur received so many requests for the program that it became institutionalized at the company, earning it a name -- The Life Skills Bread Baking Program -- and inspiring an accompanying booklet entitled, A Short Course in Baking with Yeast. Today, more than 20,000 students at 60 schools have learned a lesson that will last them a lifetime: They will not only nourish themselves but nourish others too. And all they need to do so is their hands, flour, yeast, water and an oven.

Communities become involved in different ways. Classes range in attendance from 150 to 820 students and are usually held in a school cafeteria or auditorium hall where a King Arthur baker is assisted by two students. A professional chef's demonstration mirror is mounted above the work station so the audience can see every step of the process. The company ships the ingredients before the class (all the flour is donated by King Arthur and all the yeast by Red Star Yeast Company). In many locales, a supermarket will donate bags for the take-home baking kits, and volunteers will help portion and pack the yeast and flour. In some cases, the classes are so large, and the rate of return of baked bread brought back to feed the hungry so high that the donations are divided and delivered to several different charities.

"Over the years, between 70 percent and 90 percent of the students bring back bread to donate," says Joe Caron of King Arthur Flour. "And the highest rates of return -- about 90 percent -- come from schools in the poorer rural or inner-city neighborhoods."

Michael Jubinsky, one of the four King Arthur baker instructors, remembers a recent class he taught to students in a particularly poor neighborhood. One of the students asked him, "What if you don't have a bowl?" Jubinsky replied, "Do you have a pot? Then that will work." At the end of the class when Jubinsky asked the students if they would bring one of their loaves of bread back to donate to a shelter, a teenager jubilantly exclaimed, "You mean we re going to give it to the needy?" Jubinsky recalls, "It was absolutely awesome to see how proud this made them."

Farley Rezendes, another King Arthur Baker instructor, says, "I tell students `I got started in baking around your age -- when I was in eighth-grade.' After every class several students come up to me and ask how they can become bakers. Perhaps they realize for the first time that it's a career option." Rezendes, who has a degree in pastry arts from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, R.I., says, "I see this as a life-skill, whether or not you choose it as a career. Many of the kids in my classes have no idea where bread, much less wheat, comes from. They think bread is something that comes from a shelf in a store. So when they learn how simple it is to make something very good and very nutritious, and they know exactly what's in it -- well, it's inspiring."

Although the program is usually taught to fifth-, sixth-, seventh and eighth-graders, it has been taught to first- and second-graders too. Diane Paraskevas, a PTA program chairperson at St. Paul School in Princeton, N.J., read about the program in a local paper and decided there was no reason it couldn't be taught to all the students at St. Paul, from first through eighth grade. King Arthur agreed. "Afterward, I got a lot of calls from parents who said the students not only learned to bake bread at school but came home and taught them how to bake. We sent home 341 bread kits on Friday and on Monday 300 loaves of bread came back, " says Paraskevas proudly.

With the same basic dough recipe, one also can make rolls, English muffins, pretzels and pizza crusts. So dig in -- you'll soon see why bread-making is grabbing the hearts and hands of kids everywhere.