Baking homemade breads is amazing, but doing it with lots of little help can be both fun and a challenge at the same time.
Baking and teaching my children is truly one of the most rewarding things I can do as a parent. On the other hand, it is also the most time consuming and sometimes frustrating part of my baking week!
In the ideal world when you are baking your homemade breads as your kids come to help, it would be full of laughter and beautiful memories. Where you never lose your patience as your kids are actually learning and helping. It is in these moments you look back on proudly knowing you were present and active in their lives, even if it was only just for a moment. Yes, this is a real reality that can happen for you!
More often than not, it's constantly reminding yourself they're only little. They are only trying to help. They are doing the best they can. Your kids are simply enjoying the moment as your flour goes flying everywhere, your dough ends upside down on the floor and the noise is so loud it's echoing in your head. The whole while you're looking at the clock and that giant list to do that you haven't accomplished yet. All you want to do is scream because you're overwhelmed!
It is in these frustrating moments that make the beautiful moments such as in this particular bake with my 2 youngest daughters that makes it so sweet and worth it all. Or when my 15 year old daughter comes home from working her first job at the local bakery. As she tells me how her boss was asking where she had learned to bake with all the compliments and responded from her Mom!
When you have teenagers and you're trying to find a way to reach them and relate to them it can truly be heartbreaking as you are just doing the best you can in the moment and they just want to hide in their room with friends. The moment, however, you are named as the one that taught them the skills that they needed for their job... it's an unexplainable feeling of pride. It's a true realization of how much your children are actually paying attention, watching you and learning from your example, even when you didn't think they were.
It is in the frustrating moments that you learn your true grit and ability as a baking parent to overcome all the struggles that come your way. It is in those moments of frustration and messes in your kitchen you can discover just how passionate and dedicated you are to having fresh homemade goods in your own home. It is only from the hard moments that we can truly enjoy the good moments to their fullest!
There are those moments as a parent can be very frustrating to be actively baking with your kids side by side, especially toddlers. There are going to be days when you are baking at home with your family that you will have to take a pause to breathe and to remind yourself to be patient.
There will, also, be those beautiful moments where laughter feels your heart and your home. Moments where you were truly present in the moment with your family. Moments of amazing tasting creations you created together. Moments of embarrassing laughter as the bread just didn't turn out that great because your kids were helping so much you forgot to add the salt to the dough. Let me let you in on a little secret, bread made without salt is truly horrible tasting and I've done more than once.
Accidents and messes are bound to happen. Laughter and frustration will equally fill your kitchen as your children start to come and join you baking and cooking in your home. They're not always the best help, but the reward of knowing the amazing skills that you are teaching them side by side and the pride you can take in that as their parent is absolutely irreplaceable. Those little silly moments in your life are moments you will remember for years to come. It is living inside the moments of frustration and joy that makes life all worth living.
If you are new to making homemade breads I would love to invite you to come and join me. I would love to make the learning process easier for you than it was for me in the beginning. And having an opportunity to have a community of like-minded individuals going through this journey with you maybe just a thing that you didn't know you needed!
In this weeks free homemade bread training I included more behind the scenes, funny moments and all the mess ups. Grab the free recipe and join the community at https://milledartistry.ck.page/65eec5c831
Quick video overview: Preparing your work area, pulling all your ingredients out, running short on ingredients, missing a key ingredient in the recipe, including your small kids, mixing, shaping, a small altering of the recipe to stretch it, proofing and baking of two short bread loaves.
#bakingmadeeasy #bakingwithtoddlers #bakingwithchildren