Going Against the Grain

Hello everyone! I have a very important question for you:

• How much do you love bread?

There's no right or wrong answer (although I think you can guess what I would say!), but all over the world, bread, in many different forms, has played and continues to play an important role in everyday food culture. It gets made into sandwiches, dipped into soups and stews, it gets stuffed with all kinds of tasty meats or veggies, and comes in an infinite amount of sizes, shapes, colours and flavours.

With this in mind, I wonder: Why do we love bread so much? And why is homemade bread almost always so much better?

That's not to say that bread from the grocery store can't be good too, but wouldn't you rather have a slice of warm, homemade bread, maybe with a little butter or jam on top?

What makes a good bread baker? What makes a good bread recipe? Is it possible to only make one's bread, instead of having to buy it?

These are all questions I'd like to answer.

As with any good experiment, it's a good idea to start with a hypothesis. I think that sourdough bread recipes might make some of the best bread, but I would like to test out recipes that use regular yeast as well.

This is where math comes in. From my research, I've discovered that the amount of water used in the recipe, or the hydration percentage, not only changes depending on the kind of bread you're making or the kind of flour you're using, but it also has a huge impact on the bread itself. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what that ideal percentage might be, but I would like to test this out for myself.

With a grade 6 class, the math curriculum includes the following expectation under the number sense and numeration strand:

• estimate quantities using benchmarks of 10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%

as well as investigating the relationship between fractions and percentages. Bread making lends itself very well to this strand, as well as helping to reinforce students's understanding of metric measurements and estimation.

From my research, I can tell you that no matter how many things you add to a loaf of bread, be it olives, molasses, cheese or anything else, you have to have a good bread to begin with, and that means understanding the basic elements and how they work together: flour, yeast, water and salt. The chemistry of how these work together is amazing, and when you throw in the fact that it's basically a living thing (what with all the tiny yeast micro-organisms and all), it's no wonder bread has been revered and treasured for thousands of years.