Teaching young people about baking bread
I'm a bit torn, and I'm hoping for some advice.
I've been asked to teach young people attending a youth drop-in centre how to bake bread. The youth are in their mid-late teens, and I've been told I have a 3-hour window to teach. The centre has a kitchen that reportedly cranks out daily meals, but I haven't done a reconnaissance of the facility yet. I've read up a bit on this here [1] and here [2].
Part of me wants to take a very, very basic approach - think 5-minutes-a-day [3], with a donation of a dough whisk and a plastic container to house the dough that's made after the lessons are done. I'd talk a bit about what's in mass-production store-bought bread (having them go through the ingredient list), a bit about ingredients and very basic baking chemistry, have the students mix up a batch of dough, then shape a batch that's gone through a pre-proof and bake some bread immediately.
Part of me would like to do something more holistic - show them locally milled whole wheat flour, talk about the U.K. Real Bread movement [4], etc. - but I don't think I can cover that AND have the kids eat their own bread in 3 hours.
Pro's of the first approach: the kids eat their own bread before they head home; simple, non-exotic, easy-to-obtain ingredients (some of these kids may be from single-parent-social-assistance homes); easy-peasy, so should encourage kids to try at home; even with unbleached all purpose flour, the bread has GOT to be better than "Wonder-what's-in-it" bread.
Pro's of the second approach: generally better for the kids; leads to far better bread than 5MAD.
I'm strongly leaning toward the initial approach, but what do you think?