Bread Dolls

We made bread dolls for lunch today, using the bread recipe from the back of Tomie dePaola's Watch Out for Chicken Feet in Your Soup. At least, we used the recipe to make the bread dough - we modeled our dolls after some we saw on Village Feast.

DePaola's recipe is intended for the more traditional, braided, Easter bread babies, with an egg baked into the bread, for a face - like these, from Sprinkle Bakes. It is the type of bread doll depicted in the dePaola's story, about a little boy taking his friend to visit his Italian grandmother. However, the recipe only provides enough dough for one doll of that type, and we needed seven for lunch.

So, after mixing, kneading, and allowing dePaola's sweet, cinnamon dough to rise, then punching it down, and letting it rest, we divided it into seven potato shaped ovals, with eight bits left over.

We pinched up a rough head shape, and cut three slits, to make arms and legs, in each oval.

Then we rolled seven of the bits into ropes, to wrap around the heads, like scarves.

Finally, we used the last bit to make some tiny ropes for mouths, and poked deep eye holes, with a tooth pick.

We covered the dolls, and let them rise another twenty minutes, and then baked them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, still covered, for 20 minutes. After that, we reduced the oven temperature to 225 degrees Fahrenheit, and let the dolls bake an additional 10 minutes, uncovered for the last five.

The children were pretty pleased with their lunchtime treat. The dough is sweet, but not too sweet, and is quite good with fruit, cheese, and honey.

Oh, and if you're curious about dePaula's recipe, you can find it online, here, at a story activity page from the Bennington Free Library.

Or, if your just interested in bread making projects in general, you might check out the Unplugged Project page at Unplug Your Kids, where the theme this month is bread.

It's great to be a homeschooler.