The Bread Table

61 Breads and Snacks to Make with Children, Easiest First

Before We Begin

This book is a long day at one kitchen table. Anton, an old baker, and Vera, his neighbour, talk while the children of the street measure, stir and wait for the oven. Every recipe comes from somewhere else in the world, and every one brings back a memory.

How to Use This Book

The recipes go from the easiest to the hardest, so each one teaches a skill the next will use. Each says which steps a child can do and which belong to a grown-up.

A grown-up always handles the oven, the stove, hot pans, boiling water and sharp knives. Honey is never for babies under one year old. If anyone has an allergy, check every ingredient first. Taste dough, batter and egg only once they are cooked, and wash hands after touching raw egg.

Part 1: Before Breakfast

Before breakfast the kitchen is cool and quiet, and nothing needs the oven yet. This first part of the day brings snacks that are rolled, dipped, toasted and cooked in a pan, and it ends with the first simple flatbreads, so that small hands learn to measure and mix before they ever bake.

The long kitchen table is already laid. Anton, an old baker who spent his working life in kitchens far from home, sits at the end of the table under the hanging copper pans. Vera, his neighbour, who bakes with the children of the street on weekend mornings, stands by the window with the jar of wooden spoons.

1. Start With Something That Cannot Go Wrong

Anton: The first recipe a child makes should be one that cannot go wrong. Start with something that cannot go wrong, and the child comes back to the table every Saturday after.

Vera: Not bread, then? I thought we would begin with a loaf, since bread is what I most want to learn properly.

Anton: Bread comes later, the way a river comes after rain. First the hands must learn to measure, to stir and to roll. Honey oat balls need no oven and no stove, so nothing can burn.

Before the Kettle Boils

Vera: Bina is here already, kneeling on the bench beside the bread bin, and Arlo has taken the stool next to the flour sack. They want to know where these come from.

Anton: From the cold, green hills of the north, where wheat struggles in the wet wind and oats grow tall. Farm children there carry oats rolled with honey in their pockets on the long walk to school.

Vera: Small food for small pockets.

Anton: Yes. And a good first lesson, because a child who has pressed loose oats into a firm ball already knows something true about how dry grain and a sticky liquid learn to hold together.

At the Work Table

For about 16 balls: 90 g rolled oats (1 cup), 125 g smooth peanut butter or sunflower seed butter (1/2 cup), 85 g runny honey (1/4 cup), 40 g raisins (1/4 cup) and a pinch of salt. No oven and no stove.

Anton: Two warnings first. Honey is not for babies under one year old. Peanuts and seeds can make some people very ill, so anyone with an allergy must check every ingredient before the bowl comes out.

Anton: A child weighs the oats, raisins and salt into a large bowl and stirs them with a wooden spoon.

Anton: A child adds the peanut butter and the honey and stirs until every flake shines like wet sand at low tide and a pinch holds together when pressed.

Vera: Too dry, add a teaspoon of honey. Too sticky, add a spoonful of oats. Children love deciding which.

Anton: Cover the bowl and chill it for 20 minutes. Then the children wet their hands and roll balls the size of a walnut, about 20 g each.

Anton: Chill the balls for 30 minutes more. They keep for five days in a closed box in the refrigerator. The grown-up only reaches the high shelf.

A Farm Kitchen in the Hills, Long Ago

Vera: These remind me of my aunt Fenna. She worked in a farm kitchen whose stove smoked whenever the wind came from the north, and on haymaking mornings she rolled oats and honey into balls for us, still warm from her hands.

Vera: I was six, and I ate mine before the hay cart had left the yard. She said nothing at all, rolled another one, and slipped it into my apron pocket with a look that told me I would be hungry again by noon.

Anton: That is the whole of baking. Patience, and a second one in the pocket. I have known master bakers who never learned it.

By the Window, Half Past Seven

Question: Arlo asks why the balls must rest in the cold before and after rolling.

Answer: Cold firms the honey and the nut butter, the way frost firms the mud on a path, so the oats stay where the hands put them. Warm balls slowly slump, like snow in spring sunshine.

Three quick questions. One: Who should never be given honey? Two: How long do the balls chill after rolling? Three: Where do oats grow better than wheat?

Answers. One: Babies under one year old. Two: Thirty minutes. Three: In the cold, wet hills of the north.

Vera: And what do they drink with them, up in those hills?

Anton: A glass of cold milk, poured from a jug that has stood all night in the pantry. Wait. Bina has finished her honey ball already, so pour her a glass first, and one more for Arlo.

2. Yesterday's Bread Toasts Better

Anton: Most people believe that bread a day old is finished, fit only for the birds on the windowsill. It is not true. Yesterday's bread toasts better than fresh.

Vera: Better? Most people throw it to the sparrows.

Anton: Fresh bread is full of water. In a hot oven it steams and goes soft and bendy. Bread that has rested a night has given some of that water back to the air, so it crisps quickly and holds its sugar.

The Bread Bin, Early

Vera: Emil has opened the bread bin and found four slices from Thursday's loaf, curling at the corners like autumn leaves. He looks worried, as if he had been caught doing something wrong.

Anton: Tell him those slices are exactly what we need. In the cold northern lands, where winter mornings stay dark until breakfast is long over, nobody wastes bread, and cinnamon sugar fingers are how a hard slice becomes a treat.

Vera: A treat from a scrap. I like that. But where does the cinnamon come from? Nothing like it can grow in the north.

Anton: No. It is the inner bark of a tree from hot, wet islands far to the south. The bark is peeled off in thin strips and dried in the sun, and it rolls itself up into quills, the way a dry leaf curls at the end of summer.

At the Work Table

For 16 fingers: 4 slices of day-old white or brown bread, 30 g soft butter (2 tablespoons), 50 g sugar (1/4 cup) and 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon. Oven at 200°C (400°F). Baking time 8 to 10 minutes.

Anton: A grown-up heats the oven to 200°C (400°F) and lines a baking tray with baking paper.

Anton: A child stirs the sugar and cinnamon together in a cup until the colour is even, with no pale streaks left.

Anton: A child spreads the butter thinly over each slice, right to the edges, then sprinkles the cinnamon sugar thickly and presses it down with a flat hand.

Anton: A child cuts every slice into four fingers with a table knife and lays them on the tray, sugar side up. The crusts stay on.

Vera: Could we use the grill instead?

Anton: You could, but sugar under a grill burns in seconds. The oven is slower and kinder. A grown-up opens the oven, slides the tray onto the middle shelf and bakes the fingers for 8 to 10 minutes, until the sugar bubbles and the edges turn golden. Children stand back from the open oven door, because the heat rushes out like wind from a desert.

Vera: And the grown-up takes the tray out in oven gloves. Melted sugar is hotter than boiling water, so the fingers cool on the tray for five minutes before anyone touches them. They are best eaten the same morning, while they still crackle.

A Harbour Bakery in the North, Long Ago

Anton: My first master was Gustav. His bakery stood above the harbour, so close to the water that the flour sacks smelled of salt and the gulls sat on the chimney to warm their feet.

Anton: Every evening he sliced the bread that had not sold, and every morning before school he buttered it, sugared it, baked it and sold the fingers at the side window for one small coin a handful. The children queued in the dark with their breath steaming. Years later some of them came back to buy their own bread from him, with their own children holding their hands.

Vera: Did he make money from it?

Anton: Almost none. I asked him once why he bothered. He said a child who loves yesterday's bread will never be hungry. I have thought about that for fifty years.

By the Cooling Rack

Question: Emil wants to know why the sugar turns shiny and hard as the fingers cool.

Answer: In the oven the sugar melts into the butter. As it cools it sets again into a thin, glassy layer, like the first skin of ice on a puddle. If it stays sticky, the fingers needed one more minute.

Three quick questions. One: Why is yesterday's bread better for these fingers? Two: At what temperature do they bake? Three: How long must they cool before anyone touches them?

Answers. One: It holds less water, so it crisps instead of steaming. Two: 200°C (400°F). Three: Five minutes, on the tray.

Vera: Emil has eaten three already. He says that tomorrow he will hide the heel of the loaf on purpose.

Anton: Good. That look on his face is why bakers get up in the dark, and why I still keep a few slices back every evening.