Bonnie has always loved cooking with me.

Usually, I do the measuring and she does the pouring and stirring- mostly out of a concern to keep the mess to a minimum! lol    The other day, however, I decided to let go of that and just let her do everything- the measuring, pouring, stirring, kneading, as she made a loaf of bread on her very own.  She felt so independant!     We'll probably do this several more times until she can finally make bread without even needing my supervision.  

The bread we chose to make was Anadama Bread, using this recipe.

I like this picture so much that I am using it for my computer wallpaper now:


Stirring together the oats and water after they've had a chance to cool 20 minutes.


Measuring out the molasses:


After doing this much, Bonnie decided she was too hot in the sweater she was wearing, so she changed- and found one of my aprons and put it on.  I think she looks so cute -  miniature homemaker.









This is what her loaf looked like before she let it rise:


I was going to take an after picture, but she punched it down before I could get the camera ready!  Here she is rolling it into a shape to put in the bread pan:



Here is the bread after it finished baking- her very first loaf of bread, made all by herself!  



The bread was very sweet and tasty, especially with some butter spread on it while it was still warm. Great job, Bonnie!!

Here is the recipe:
Anadama Bread
Source: A blog about food

Ingredients

1 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 cups boiling water
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups warm water
2 tsp oil
2 pkges or 2 tbs yeast
5-7 cups flour

Directions

Put oatmeal, corn meal, salt and boiling water in a big bowl, and stir until everything is wet. Wait twenty minutes.

Add molasses, oil and warm water to the bowl. Sprinkle the yeast over the top of the mixture. Stir until all the yeast is wet. Add 5 cups of flour to the mix, one at a time, and stir. Add additional flour (probably between 1 and 2 cups) a little at a time until dough sticks together but is not sticky (the dough is still a bit sticky to me, so don't worry too much about that).

Let ball sit for 20-30 minutes. Punch it down and knead it one more time.

Cut ball of dough into thirds, and make a loaf out of each. Place in a greased bread pan and let sit for 30 minutes.

Bake at 375 for 30 minutes