Ancient Egyptian Bread and Beer
Teach them [1]
to have fun baking. Smile a lot, tell them how good they are doing and ask them if they are having fun. Let them know they will get better with practice and before long, they will be making good baked goods and feeling good about their fine accomplishments and themselves.
I would start with baking history in a fun way going back to the Egyptians when they were building the pyramids and being paid in bread and beer. Then some baking terms and vocabulary then on how to doing some baking but not too easy - make them stretch a little. I like deserts, especially chocolate ones, so I would start there...an easy yummy! Cookies and cakes. I like the way Rachel Allen teaches her students at the Ballymaloe Cooking School in Ireland. I loved it when I stayed there on vacation. I think watching her in action would help you.
Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself - how would I want to learn this baking stuff?
Generosity is the highest and most difficult of the character attributes, to have and hold dear, that are required for success. Teaching is the highest form of generosity. So, be generous with your students and teach them everything you know without expecting anything in return. You will be rewarded many times over.
Good luck sustainthebaker and keep smiling :-)
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I would start with baking history in a fun way going back to the Egyptians when they were building the pyramids and being paid in bread and beer.
dabrownman, my guess is that your wife might consider that 'bread and beer' to be not so much a payment but rather just sustenance to keep the slaves who built the pyramids alive. Bread and beer in those days were equivalent to bread and water today.
SteveB
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You assume that Jewish slaves built the pyramids? Even experts fail when they learn their assumptions are wrong. You aren't claiming that Jews built the pyramids are you? The pyramids were pretty old when Ramses the Great was Pharaoh and let the 'chosen people' go. Jews would have been Egyptian slaves for how long by then? I've learned something new today - that Jews actually built the Pyramids. Who knew? No matter though.
Back then, when things, like cash, didn't exist, beer and bread were right up there with IPads and Scions. That was how the pyramid builders were paid because they demanded to be paid that way. It was how they existed - or they rioted to get their bread and beer - they just couldn't live without them. Just like now, when cash allows folks to exist to buy bread, beer and other stuff.
To call it bread and water today, makes beer seem inconse1quential and beer is far short of that. It is one of the 6 food groups with sugar, chocolate, pizza, donuts and bourbon :-)
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Well... since you didn't ask...
Egyptians considered bread and beer as the first-fruits of the field... products of the life-sustaining cereal crops. And, bread and beer were made in the same process... bread being solid beer, and beer being liquid bread.
In their burial rituals, the most common ritual prayer went like this --
htp di nsw n wsir hnty-ntw, nb Ddw nb AbDw m prt hrw m t hnkt, etc.
"A kingly offering to Osiris, lord of Djedu, lord of Abedju -- this prayer offering of bread and beer [and on to the first fruits of the flock, of the earth, etc]
The ancent Egyptian hierogyph for bread is a bun-like sign.
FWIW -- The Hebrews may not have been "slaves" in our construct of the word, but rather very low-caste Asiatics performing the most menial of duties. That said, it certainly is easy to understand that later generations of Hebrews, looking backward, could have considered their forebears as slaves...
Also, the city of Pi-Rameses has been partially excavated and the world's oldest inscription mentioning the Hebrew diety of war and storm, YHWH [not in Hebrew script, which hadn't evolved before that time] has been found there. It is probable that archaeological digging at this site may remain suspended while Egypt suspends democratic reforms. Currently, the site has been covered over and planted, and is completely off limits to archaeology.
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I'm taking this to a new thread so as not to hijack this one.