“Thank you for doing this! What a wonderful way to bring people together”, read the yellow note, given to me by the beaming gentleman wearing black Test Kitchen’s event apron dusted with flour. The paper for the note was torn from the old leaflet announcing some past event at the historic Lovely Lane Church in Baltimore where the second bread-making event took place on last January. I still keep the note. It makes me happy to think that perhaps my efforts can make some difference.

I began baking my own bread 3 years ago after returning home from the trip to Germany. I grew up in Ukraine and never thought much about bread. It was there daily, fresh at the bakery: dark round loaves of rye and bricks of whole wheat Borodincky, peppered with cracked coriander seeds.
For a new immigrant, the quality of bread was not the top priority. But being reminded of good old taste, I have decided to recreate pungent Dark Ukrainian Rye loaf.

First, I found out that the main ingredient of the authentic bread is the sourdough starter, something that was a mystery to me. After few on-line searches, I captured the starter from air in Owings Mills, MD — my new home. This home-grown starter consists of many yeast cultures and is different from the mono-culture commercial factory-made yeast. The starter turned out to be easy to maintain and share. Almost immediately,
I started to receive complements about my bread from friends and family.

Few hundred loaves and couple years later, I realized that teaching interested people about this bread-making can potentially be not only worthy thesis exploration, but a fulfilling journey for a designer, which lead me to creation of the experimental educational platform:
Test Kitchen for Change.

Educational hands-on events are the central focus of Test Kitchen for Change. In the beginning, I was investigating ways to create opportunities for people to engage in slow food processes. Slow Food is an international movement promoted as an alternative to fast food. Education about food preparation, traditional and local cuisine, and growing own ingredients are some of the objectives of that organization. I tried to find support to test and implement non-traditional food services, such as: a mobile kneading service, small community-supported bakery, and even a small-business model. However, in order to make an impact on a particular local community, I decided to conduct small events. Small-group bread-making classes can be conducted without a special kitchen space, large equipment, or permits. By providing main ingredients — flour, special yeast culture, and live instructions — I have engaged people to use what they already have to make bread.

There is no shortage of recipes and on-line tutorials, yet
it took me some time and practice to make loaves that were not brick-hard (though they tasted great due to the slow fermentation). Eventually, I reached out to real experts— Atwaters Bakery— well known artisanal bread-makers in Baltimore. Luckily, they let me work one bread-making shift. Shaping dozens of loaves by hand, watching experts gracefully make and bake loaves was an incredible experience. But most important part of it all was the actual touching of the dough; immediately, I could understand how it should feel and behave. It made me realize that if I want to engage people in making bread, my program should provide hands-on experience.

At the educational events participants learn that healthy and delicious bread can be made at home with little time commitment. The process of sourdough bread-making consists of small steps performed between the long stretches of time, which can allow someone to live a fast and busy life while engaging in slow food processes. My project evolved with every event, making it suitable for a particular audience and location.

At the first bread-making event I used a commercial kitchen to mix 50+ loaves-worth-of-dough. I transported the container with rising dough to another location where participants shaped the loaves. I made an assumption, that participants would enjoy shaping the elastic dough and this would make them interested in learning more. Event was held at the beautiful old church decorated with stained glass windows designed and produced by the Tiffany Company. The sanctuary features a walking labyrinth. One kind church volunteer introduced visitors to meditative techniques that were a great addition to the experience of shaping loaves and general slowing down. Visitors enjoyed tasting fresh bread (most of it donated by the Atwaters bakery), learning about bread-making techniques and tools.

Special containers with instructions and the live starter culture were distributed to people at the event. Free bread recipes, videos, web resources, and personal support by e-mail are parts of the overall Test Kitchen for Change activities. People shaped the bread, decorated spoons, and watched bread-making videos. Even kids made dough sculptures and play food objects.

The next morning, participants come to pick their loaves and the surplus of bread was donated to the Brown Memorial Park Avenue Church for their charity events and even used in services. That was a beautiful and well-attended event. We received many complements and questions. There were some interesting discussions about bread. However, participants expressed the need to see the entire process, and not just the bread -shaping part.

In collaboration with Station North Co-operative Garden and Lovely Lane Church, second event has attracted many people from the community. This event was advertised as “bring your mixing bowl” class. It was an even more successful experience. Making bread together, but making it personally was engaging for people. Participants added seeds, greens, and spices when they were mixing their own bread. It was wonderful to see a diverse group of mixing bowls holding rising dough covered with kitchen towels all sitting on a “rest” station. One participant wrapped his bowl with his jacket to keep it warm on a January afternoon. People mixed the dough and took their creations home to rise and bake. I had to wait for e-mails with pictures. And they arrived with captions: “my first loaf!”, “Tastes great”, and sometimes “too much flax seeds” or “waiting to cool, smells wonderful”.

Meeting people at the events and teaching them about bread also taught me that people are very eager to learn and try new things.

Being a designer, I jumped to the opportunity to curate and design a collection of objects to be explored at the event. I collected, borrowed, and made containers and tools in hope to educate people about bread, yeast, malt, wheat sprouting and wild foods. Objects in the Bread Zoo — the name of my collection—along with books, videos and jars of sprouted grains comprise a small bread museum. People spend a great deal of time looking at the specimens during the events. They can learn that sprouted grains are called malted, and can be dried and milled into flours or added to bread as is. Also, the seeds of the common plantain, wild buckwheat, and roasted roots of the chicory and dandelion plants are just a few wild ingredients that can easily be integrated into the bread.

During the second bread-making event, the members of St. Paul Co-operative garden educated and recruited people into helping them to design and build an outdoor cooking oven. Inspired by our collaborative event, they are hoping to generate even more food-centered activity and learning center right in the garden.

Conducting experimental bread-making classes during the thesis show at the Meyerhoff Gallery gave me opportunity to refine hands-on events even more. Small, three or four-person classes met several times a day for a brief activity in the gallery. 5–10 minutes intervals spaced in between longer periods of time, illustrated to the participants that nature (yeast and time) is doing most of the work such as relaxing the dough and leavening it slowly. Bread becomes reach in flavor and nutrients while the process doesn’t waste extra energy such as the use of speed mixers, aerators, additives and preservatives. The final bread ingredients: whole and unbleached wheat flours, water, salt, and yeast. The process: human touch, time, and any home oven.

Classes in the gallery engaged participants and occasional viewers. We had to schedule additional one-on one classes to accommodate even more of interested participants. Since this particular event was in the gallery setting, I created a special outlet for participants to showcase their “first loaves”. Makers were asked to bring back one slice to be displayed in a special vitrine along with a handwritten narrative about the experience.

“She baked me”, or “My dad ate all bread”, read some of the comments. Vitrine got filled up with an assortment of slices, everyone is a unique cross-section of the bread and in some ways are the portraits of the makers. Still, I am eager to learn how to make it better. For example, I learned that people’s ovens are very different and some first time bakers need more support during the baking step. I have designed, made, and distributed special baking stones to the participants of Bread 3 classes. Currently, I am researching and experimenting with other techniques of heat distribution in order to help people bake better bread.