The pandemic flipped our world. Despite the negative impacts, there were some positive things that came out of it: thinking differently, advanced technology and reconnecting.
“Because of COVID, I found this project through Culinary Arts Facebook pages where people can trade resources. Someone had posted last school year that they had done this Baking for Good project with their kids,” culinary arts instructor Jules Shelkoff at Decatur High said.
“I thought oh, that’s so cool that King Arthur Flour does this outreach program for culinary arts, and family and consumer science programs across the U.S.,” she said.
Connecting people from the farmers to bakers, the King Arthur Baking Company “believes in the power of baking to make a difference — for people and the planet,” according to their site.
The baking company offers a free outreach program for students grades four through 12 created with three goals: learn, bake and share.
Not long after Shelkoff applied for the program, they received about 300 pounds of flour, yeast, bench scrapers and recipe books.
Shelkoff and Tex Blair, the other DHS culinary arts instructor, demonstrated the recipe first so the classes would have an idea of what to expect as many had never made bread from scratch.
Last November the combined classes (grades 10-12) of about 220 students learned how to make dough, shape and bake braided loaves of bread, dinner rolls or cinnamon rolls of their choosing.
The project was broken up into a two-day activity: One day they made the dough and let it rise overnight in the refrigerator. The next day it was baked.
“We encouraged them to knead the dough by hand. Some figured out how to use the dough hooks in the mixers. It was about 50/50,” chef Tex said.
The recipe made about 2 dozen cinnamon rolls, 24 rolls or 2 loaves.
The last goal of the project was to share.
The students kept half to enjoy themselves and packaged up the other half to bestow to others.
“We saw them giving it to their friends during lunch, as well as a bunch of them took it home and shared it with their family which was nice.
“We’ve reached out to numerous companies to partner with and a lot of these big companies don’t partner with schools anymore because they are just too large. It’s really nice to see that King Arthur wants to involve kids, get them interested in culinary and that’s their way of doing it, Shelkoff said.
For more information, visit www.kingarthurbaking.com/about/bakeforgood
Each Sunday we write about a deserving person or charity events such as fun-runs, volunteer projects and other community gatherings that benefit a good cause. To submit a story for us to cover, send to ajc.doinggood@gmail.com.
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