Cooking with kids: bread

I'm watching my four year-old niece today. Baking bread is a really good project to do with a little kid. I told her all about yeast, and showed her how it gets foamy when mixed with warm water. Then I had her scoop in flour while I mixed.

When it was time to knead the dough, I gave her a handful to play with. She kept saying it was gross and "made her hands look like a tree frog." But when I offered to knead her dough as well, she refused.

We let the dough rise while we went to the park, where we played "Doctor Who" (her choice, I swear). My "Doctor" is really campy (a 21 year-old woman trying to sound quirky, male, and British. It was to be expected, really). My niece's "Rose" was magnificent, though. She does the accent surprisingly well.

Eventually we headed home and ate lunch before shaping the dough. My niece wanted to use her cookie cutters to make fun shapes to decorate the bread, so I rolled out some of the dough and helped her cut the shapes out.

The bread smells lovely, but I forgot to score the top. So it's really lumpy and misshapen. Oh well, I doubt my niece will mind. You can still see the shapes, after all. We'll see how she likes the bread, once she wakes up from her nap.