By SARA KINCAID, Bismarck Tribune

On the tables of Tania Schroeder’s classroom are bags of flour.

“Where does the flour come from?” Schroeder asks the class.

The Riverside Elementary School first-graders answer: “Wheat.”

“Who grows the wheat?” Schroeder asks.

“The farmers,” they answer.

What the flour became Friday was loaves of bread. It was the culminating project on a lesson on the origin of food. The first-grade class at Riverside received an agriculture-in-the-classroom grant from the state agriculture department.

Last fall, they started learning about the USDA food pyramid and making good food choices. Later, they read and performed “The Little Red Hen,” then learned about the processing of wheat. On Friday, they learned to make bread.

“We learned about honey from bees, and switched to how things change, then switched to wheat,” first-grader Jerod Mattison said.

Instead of mixing bowls and cups, the students used a large plastic bag as a bowl, and had all the other ingredients measured out in smaller plastic bags and plastic cups.

Their teacher walked them through each step. After the water was added to the yeast, flour and honey, the students squashed the ingredients in the bag with their fingers.

“It feels smushy,” first-grader Darius WhiteLight said.

After 10 minutes, the yeast started to puff out some of the bags. When they opened them to add more flour, the yeasty smell filled the room.

“It smells really good,” first-grader Clarissa Perez said.

The other students at her table agreed. “It smells like bread already,” Jerod said.

One student remarked it smelled like beer.

As the students added more flour to the bag, it started to look more like dough. Mixing the flour into the dough mixture required creativity on the part of the students. They pinched it, squashed it, pounded it and even punched it – not in the traditional sense of punching down the dough, but like a punching bag.

Each student was able to take some bread home. The students like a variety of toppings on their bread. Clarissa likes cinnamon, Jerod likes “everything” and Darius likes peanut butter and jelly.

(Reach reporter Sara Kincaid at 250-8251 or sara.kincaid@bismarcktribune.com.)

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