Ugly Bug Breakfast Bread

I had great plans to make a ladybug bread for the children this morning, like one I saw over at Cafe Chocolada. Hers was a savory bread, with poppy seed accents. I didn't have any poppy seeds, and I wanted a sweet bread for breakfast, so I went with the Elisa Kleven's recipe from her Sun Bread book (if you don't have access to the book, you can find the recipe here, at Little Page Turners).

I mixed the ingredients in a bread maker, on dough setting, and then rolled about two thirds of it into a ball, for the body of the bug. Just remember, when mixing bread dough in a bread maker, it's liquid ingredients first, with dry ingredients on top, and yeast last.

I used a sharp knife to make a slit in the body, for wings. Then, I pressed on a small ball of dough, rolled in baker's cocoa (just to add color), for the head, reserving a bit of dough to make...

...eyes, and spots. I rolled the spots in the cocoa too, and made slits in the dough to press them into the body of the bug.

Finally, I covered it with a clean dish towel, and let it rise for fifteen minutes, before baking for 20 minutes (covered with tinfoil for the first 15 minutes) at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Clearly, I had some proportion problems with the head, and eyes, and poppy seeds work better for adding color than baker's cocoa. So, instead of a ladybug bread, we enjoyed an ugly bug for breakfast. Of course, after seeing the ladybug larvae, that didn't seem so wrong.

It's great to be a homeschooler.