Bread-making for beginners

What do you do in Berlin with two kids when it's pouring down with rain? Well, as much as you might enjoy lying in bed listening to the rain absolutely pounding off the pavement below, some people will still be begging to be taken to an outdoor pool. Time to suggest something different. Bread-making! Dead easy. 

Bread-making for beginners:

1. Clear your kitchen of all things you hold dear. Except children. (Though for better results, perhaps tell them to get lost too.)

2. Prepare yourself mentally by getting all the bowls, spoons, mixers, jugs, water, etc, etc, ready in advance. This will save you from having a minor meltdown later when you turn to get something, and turn back seconds later to discover half the bread mix on your ceiling.

3. Assign tasks to each child to avoid needless bickering/crying. One can pour the mix into the bowl, one can pour the water. 

4. Give each child a shot of the mixer until you realise that it is struggling due to the fact that it's around 40 years old, and not one of these new-fangled (much desired) food mixers/processors with a bread mixing hook. Give up, and tell them to get stuck in with their hands. 

5. As you watch them delve in, you may find yourself wondering if they did in fact wash their hands beforehand, or whether they just did that thing where they trick you by turning on the bathroom tap for a minute. Banish these thoughts from your mind: in a moment you're going to go right off the idea of ever eating this bread anyway as they scrape bits of mix off numerous surfaces around the kitchen and add it back into the bowl.

6. Once the mixing process is complete, attempt to scrape 75% of the mix off of your children. Become so covered in the process that you forget to care and just dump it back in the bowl and shove it in a pre-warmed oven to rise. 

7. Follow your children through to the bathroom to clean up and discover your lovely Cath Kidston towels now contain 33% more carbs than they did an hour ago while the tap remains untouched. Suck back the tears. It'll wash out.

8. Return to oven 40 minutes later and discover that the heat had been too high and you have kind of already started baking the bread. Remove from bowl and toss onto a baking tray. Turn up the oven and bake for a further hour. 

9. Remove from oven and delight in the absolute lack of fresh-baked-bread smell. (How can that be?). Cut into massive (still slightly doughy) chunks and make your partner eat it as punishment for going off and enjoying himself at football. Feel happy that your kids feel utterly proud of their achievements in the kitchen, and enjoy your sandwich (sneakily made with bread from the bakery)

When I was young I used to do a lot of baking with my parents. I really enjoyed the process of bringing different ingredients together and making something that to my eyes looked pretty amazing. Around the age of 7 or 8 I got into making bread. We had a great cupboard that got loads of heat from the central heating boiler which was perfect for leaving your bread to rise. Bread-making doesn't need to be a faffy process involving yeast. I started off using bread mixes I got at the supermarket, and always felt really pleased with the results I got. Nowadays the range of bread mixes is far greater than when I was a kid, so you can find something to suit most kids taste. We've also had some really great results with some sun-dried tomato bread. Despite my slightly negative slant, I actually really enjoy baking with the kids. It's good fun for all of us and they really do feel chuffed with what they produce. They also tend to eat what they make, which makes me happy, as they don't eat so much bread otherwise. Same goes if I get them involved in making dinner - they are always keener to eat it, especially if they get to try little tastes of it during the cooking process.

(You can see more of the things we've been up to in the summer holidays here on the page 'Something... to do in the summer holidays')

Baby books I read and loved

Tame this Dr Christopher Green.

My friend at WorkingBerlinMum is looking for birth and childcare book recommendations.

Way back at the beginning of last year before we ever made the move to Berlin, I started clearing out some stuff I didn't need and discovered that I had around 22 baby books. As in, a little mountain of books on the topic of pregnancy, birth, babies, and toddlers. I utterly loved them. I especially loved the pregnancy books that tell you what's happening month by month - when you baby is the size of the Giant Snickers you just ate, which month you can teach it to love listening to the Sugababes, so that you have at least 1 person who understands you. You know, that sort of thing.

My pregnancies weren't exactly typical as such. As a diabetic things are a little bit different. You have more frequent scans - which is lovely because I have about a dozen scan pictures of each of my two, but the flip side is that you have a lot more to worry about. I would go to one scan and at the end of it the sonographer would say "Ok, well at your next scan we're going to be looking for heart problems and so on, as the children of diabetics tend to have heart defects" which would give you something new to mull over for the next 4 weeks and have you worrying yourself to death. Every scan there would be something new to 'look forward' to. So poerhaps these books provided me with a window into a nice, fluffy, normal pregnancy.

My favourite pregnancy books were:

The Best Friend's Guide to Pregnancy - funny and informative, and down to earth.

The Rough Guide to Pregnancy & Birth - a week by week guide and very funny to boot following the authors pregnancy.

What to Expect When You're Expecting - month by month, and serious in tone, but it's indispensible and answers most questions you might have or worries that are niggling you.

Expecting - by Anna McGrail & Daphne Maitland - I really liked this book. I found it one of the most informative and covered a lot of ground and dealt with health issues well. Can't remember much more about it though now, just remember I looked at it quite a lot!

Minus 9 to 1: Jools Oliver's book telling her story of problems conceiving and her journey through pregnancy to having a new baby. A nice insight for those who haven't had a baby before.

Birth. I was/am terrified of giving birth, and dreamed of being knocked out and coming round after the caesarian scar had healed. I had expected to have a c-section as I am diabetic, and that's what I wanted, but I am also desperately scared of surgery and being 'awake' during an operation was not high on my list of things I wanted to do in 2007 and 2008. But then I found this book:

Stand & Deliver by Emma Mahony. It's lots and lots of individual stories about birth and all the different experiences women can have. I read this book, and I swear I felt confident and far less scared than I could ever have imagined. This would be THE book I would recommend for anyone who is at all frightened about giving birth. It's excellent.

My favourite baby books were (oh, and I'd advise reading these prior to having a baby as you don't get any time to do so afterwards):

What to Expect: The First Year - great if you have problems. It's got an answer for everything.

The Baby Whisperer - I never had the proper full-on 'Baby Whisperer' book, but I did have one called 'The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems' or was it sleep problems?? I can't remember because my mind was so addled from lack of sleep. Anyway, I bought it for sleep problems, and I quite liked it. This author strikes a halfway point between Gina Ford and someone who doesn't give a crap. Perfect! I remember it did work, but I was never good at not caving in after a week or two and brining them back into my bed. Hence the reason I have a 2 and a half year old cuddling into me most nights.

The Best Friend's Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood - it's all there in the title. I'm saying no more.

The Baby Book: How to Enjoy Year One by Rachel Waddilove. This is a great book and really practical. But I've never heard anyone else talking about it that I know of. It's an excellent book for first time mums. Oh and it's got a foreword by Gwyneth Paltrow as the author helped her out when she had Apple.

The Rough Guide to Babies - Miranda Levy - good, but not as good as the Rough Guide to Pregnancy & Birth. Different author, but I see now that there's another book by Kaz Cooke the author of the RG to Pregnancy about babies - so it might be good.

I don't have favourite Toddler books as such - I kind of gave up - the novelty was over ha, ha! Plus, by the time I had a toddler I already had another baby, and my problems surpassed those that even Tracey Hogg herself could solve. But, I did have, and would recommend:

The Best Friend's Guide to Toddlers - excellent as per the other books and I might actually have a look at it again, if I can find it under the mess.

What to Expect: The Toddler Years - great if you want to give yourself a complex about what your child can't achieve, or give yourself a pat on the back because they are over-achieving! Otherwise, pretty pointless, unless you are really stuggling with your toddler, or don't have the confidence yet to trust your instincts. Having said that - I still bought it.

Toddler Taming - Dr. Christopher Green. This outlines all the problems you are likely to come up against with your toddler. Easy to read too. I only had a quick read of this before a friend asked to borrow it and never gave it back, so it must be really good. Though not that good that I felt compelled to ask for it back.

So that's my list of recommendations. Other pregnancy, birth, baby & toddler books are available. I know. I've read pretty much all of them.