On October 8th, I drove a few kids in Finn’s class to their bakery field trip at LeBoulanger in Sunnyvale. They’d been learning about bread and bread making and this visit was the culmination of the unit. But before we get to the bakery itself, let me share the directions we were given.
Notice anything missing? How about which direction to turn? Also, the addresses don’t match and it turns out that the bakery is at 305 North Mathilda (which is noted in Step 9) and not 350 North Mathilda which is in larger print at the top. Luckily for me, I didn’t bother inputting any address and let my phone tell me how to get there so I made it on time. Not so much for a few of the other parents who were more willing to follow the written directions. Score one for the newbie.
Once everyone had arrived, we sat down in the cafe area for a presentation from the manager of the bakery. Everyone got their own ball of dough to shape and play with.
Once we were ready to enter the bakery area, we donned hair nets and hats.
They have a big window in the cafe area where visitors can watch some of what’s going on. We started there.
The kids enjoyed the giant slab of dough on the table in front. They also liked watching another huge batch of dough which was being dumped out onto another table.
Once inside the back part of the bakery, we saw the supply rooms.
I don’t have pictures from inside because we weren’t allowed to have anything glass or breakable. In fact, jewelry, cameras, phones, etc. were all prohibited in an effort to keep anything from accidentally getting in the dough. But we were were able to go inside the big freezer and the warm proofing room, and we saw lots of different types of Rube Goldberg-like machines processing and shaping dough of all kinds.
Each student left with a bag of goodies (a cookie, a bagel and a mini sourdough loaf) and the adults got baguettes, so everyone was pretty happy! Here’s a group shot out in front.
