The baking bread project is by far one of my favorites. From baking bread, to building machines, we learned almost everything there is to know about bread! In physics we took apart bread machines and built new machines. In math I graphed the bread process in calcium, which ended up in my math menu. Lastly, we worked on writing stories and telling stories.
Tortilla Maker
As a class we had to make ideas on how we can better improve the bread making process. My partners and I decided we wanted to make the process go faster. Our design allows the user to flatten tortillas and cook them right after they are flattened. In class we learned how to make simple tortillas. By simply opening the stove and squishing the dough, you can immediately start cooking the tortilla. When making a tortilla the old fashioned way, it can take up to 20 seconds just to flatten it. With our machine it takes up to 5 seconds to flatten the dough.
In math class we spent a couple weeks working on both our cutting board and math menu. Both were important pieces in our exhibition. The cutting board had to be my favorite because we learned to construct simple shapes, that turned out to be pretty complicated to construct. After making a hand drawn draft of the cutting board design, we spent multiple critique sessions, before we put them on photoshop to digitally construct it. After digital constructing it, we then sent it to the laser cutter to engrave into pieces of wood we routed and sanded. The math menus were really fun and simple to make. All of my work was later compiled into a little booklet. The day before exhibition, I tried to save my finished work and the computer froze. I eventually had to redo it and it's something I won't forget.
Bread making
I would like to think I'm kind of an expert at making sourdough bread, because I've been doing it for weeks! We jumped straight into the project by baking in bread machines for about 3 weeks. I would say for my group, something wrong happened every week where our bread was not edible. When it came down to having to stick to one specific type of bread and using it for our exhibition, my group chose sourdough. It's a 2 day process to make the dough and we needed to let it sit in the fridge the first baking day. The second day consisted of us needing, scoring, and baking. Watch our video on how we make our awesome sourdough bread!
Writing stories
For the humanities part of exhibition, we had to tell stories about a topic my group and I agreed on. My group chose "adventure" and the story I chose was about my 3 day camping trip. Weeks before preparing our final story, the first thing I did was to interview someone. I decided to interview my dad on grilling. From presenting an audio recording and getting the best critique, the end result became something I was happy with. When exhibition came around and it was time to tell my story about my camping trip that I spent weeks working on, I had some second thoughts. I really disliked my story a couple days before exhibition, but I told it anyways and I think it was okay but I could have done better.