Rationale
Consumption of food prepared away from home plays an increasingly large role in the American diet. In 1970, 25.9 percent of all food spending was on food away from home; by 2012, that share rose to its highest level of 43.1 percent.1 Many of my young students are not only unaware of where food comes from, many do not spend time in grocery stores or supermarkets to see and shop for food in its natural, whole-food state. Bread is an interesting case when considering natural foods. My focus for students is to learn that bread is a composition of ingredients and is formed under chemical reactions influenced by those specific ingredients and a heat source.
The New Haven Public School Science Curriculum includes a focus in second grade on Nutrition, specifically the standards for healthy food choices. I plan to launch my curriculum unit by reading Everybody Bakes Bread, a picture book by Norah Dooley that introduces several types of breads, each a typical example or staple from across a number of cultures. This text is part of a series by the same author that exposes primary-level students to the common food that most cultures use in their everyday diets. The companion books include Everybody Cooks Rice, Everybody Brings Noodles, and Everybody Serves Soup. This unit focuses specifically on the story of Carrie, heading out into her multicultural neighborhood to borrow a baking tool. As she travels around and visits the friends and neighbors on her quest, she samples coconut bread from Barbados, chapatis from India, corn bread from South Carolina, pocket bread from Lebanon, challah from the Jewish "old country," pupusa from El Salvador, and braided bread from Italy. At the end of the book, Dooley has included the recipes for each of the breads that Carrie enjoys in her neighbors’ homes.
Using the bread recipes as a resource, the students will experiment with various basic ingredients (yeast, baking powder, baking soda, eggs, salt, and sugar) to discover why they are necessary to the success of the product. We will explore the chemical reactions that cause breads to rise or not, research why breads brown in the oven or skillet, and discover what makes bread smell so good while it is cooking.
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