With more time on my hands due to COVID-19, I find myself in the kitchen more frequently, experimenting with new recipes. Inspired by something a friend sent me, I decided to give gardenscape bread art a try. Whoever said bread has to be boring never tried this form of art! If you like your students to be creative and engaged, I’ve got just the lesson, activity and recipe for you! I am assigning this to my students as an enrichment E-Learning activity, but when I’m back in the classroom, you can bet gardenscape bread art will be part of my foods class as a creative lab!

Set

• Begin by sharing the quote: “Food can be expressive and therefore food can be art”. Ask students if they believe this to be true and to share why or why not.
• Since the term gardenscape is from the urban dictionary and many may not be familiar with it, I have them look it up so they know the meaning via a direct link.
• We then connect the gardenscape term to bread making in the form of focaccia bread. Students must use the provided resource, “If You Thought People Were Obsessed with Sourdough, Wait Until You See Gardenscape Focaccia” to answer some basic questions such as
  • What is focaccia?
  • Where does focaccia originate?
  • What types of ingredients are used to create the gardenscape bread art.
• Using the web-resource, “How to Make Focaccia Bread Art“, students answer:
  • What is one thing to keep in mind when choosing ingredients for your baked gardenscape bread art design? Because of this, which ingredients aren’t recommended?

Materials

• iPad or Laptop
• Projector & Screen
• Colored Pencils, Markers or Crayons
• Blank Paper
• Assorted Vegetables & Indredients for the Lab

Activities

• Now that students have an idea of what gardenscape bread art is, they are asked to search for designs of inspiration using internet resources.
• Students must find 6 design examples: two easy, two intermediate and two challenging and insert them into a provided Google Slide template.
• In the E-Learning version of this assignment, students would look through their home refrigerators and freezers, listing all viable vegetable options. In the classroom, I would give students a list of vegetable options to choose from.
• Using the vegetables listed, students must sketch a gardenscape design in color on a blank piece of paper and share with me via photo if at home or actual sketch if in the classroom.
• Now for the challenge, students make the focaccia bread using options based on what they have at home and they must recreate their sketched design onto the focaccia bread. I’ve broke the challenge into steps:
  • Step 1: Make the Bread:
    • Most recipes for focaccia call for yeast (see links above for recipes), but I found an easy, yeastless focaccia recipe that takes 40-45 minutes from start to finish to make the dough, create the design and bake the bread.  Another option is to use a frozen bread dough recipe, if you have it.  When I’m in the classroom, I will use the recipe that works best with my class period time and skill level of my students.
  • Step 2: Clean, Prep & Preheat:
    • Clean and prepare the vegetables according to the design you are creating.
    • Preheat the oven according to the recipe.
  • Step 3: Create the Gardenscape Design
    • Watch this “How To Make Gardenscape Focaccia” to help you with the vegetable design.
    • Recreate your design on the bread dough.
    • Snap of photo of your bread art gardenscape before it goes into the oven.
  • Step 4: Bake the Bread
    • Remove the bread from the oven and take a photo of the baked bread
  • Step 5: Enjoy the Bread
    • Before you eat the bread, take a picture of you with your gardenscape bread art design & attach it in Google Classroom!
      

Bread Wars

• When I get back to the classroom, I plan to implement this lab challenge as “Bread Wars”, making it a competition between the kitchens!
• My students love competing in these types of challenges and especially love showing off their skills and products to the faculty and staff who act as judges for the competition.
• The lesson and activities will be the same, but students will have to vote on one sketch to complete for the challenge from all that have been created by their group since everyone has to complete that part of the assignment.
• I will also make up a judging criteria sheet and when I do so, I will post it and share.

My Example

• I gave this activity and recipe a try before creating the challenge and sharing it with you. I must say, it was easy and fun to create. I used green beans for flower stems and cherry tomatoes cut into sections to create the flowers. Here is a photo of my first attempt at gardenscape bread art! Have fun!

Attachments

• Gardenscape Bread Art Challenge (please make a copy)
• Focaccia Bread Lab Plan by Sasha Roble
  

Similar Lessons

• SKETCHNOTES: The “Magnificent 7” Baking Ingredients