Baking: Winter Term, Week 3

Day One: We talked about what preservation is. Myla suggested that preservation is keeping something in a jar. This sparked a conversation about the different steps that make up the canning canning procedure. We discussed removing moisture so that micro-organisms need it to live. We also talked about how heating the mixture is an important step in some types of canning because this also kills enzymes and micro-organisms. And then finally, we touched on why we create a vacuum seal.

Day Two: We began our day by exploring different canned foods. We identified the various ingredients in each and discussed their role in the preservation process. We talked about necessary ingredients that do a job other than adding flavor. Salt and vinegar were put into this category. We then sampled many of these ingredients individually. Surprisingly the entire group loved the vinegar!

Day Three: We went to work slicing cucumbers and salting them while they lay on a screen so that the salt would draw the moisture out over the next 24 hours.

Day Four: We put the cucumbers into a jar and then measured and added other ingredients like vinegar, onion, garlic, peppercorn, sugar and shallots. We hypothesized what the mixture would taste like the next day based on the amounts of different ingredients that we chose to add. Lots of math skills came into play during this time. We were curious about fractions and used a round piece of paper to represent one whole. We then drew lines and cut the paper like a pie to identify the different fractions within.

Day Five: We tasted our group pickle mixture and made our own individual recipes using the information gathered after tasting the group recipe from the day before. We also used a microscope to examine some mold and slime that began growing on some old vegetables that had not been preserved.