Michaelmas Dragon Bread

Monday is bread-baking day at our house.  It's also Uncle Bob's hot cereal day, kitchen cleaning day and popcorn for snack day, if you'd like to know!

In honor of Michaelmas this upcoming Sunday, we baked dragon bread, in what's become an annual tradition for us!

While we baked we learned a new song (I found the rhyme online (oops, can't remember where) and then put a tune to it. 

I decided that we needed a savory dragon to go with our roasted chicken and broccoli dinner, so I searched the internet.  I combined a few recipes and altered a few things to fit our needs (which, sidenote, made me really proud that I am becoming enough of a bread baker to have an opinion on how I like bread made!). 

Here's what we did:
3 c. flour
1 c. shredded cheese (I used a mix of colby-jack, mozzerella and parmesan)
1 1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 pkg yeast (2 3/4 tsp)
1 tsp salt
1 c. warm milk
1 egg at room temp
dill
garlic salt
extra parmesan for top

*Add sugar and yeast to warm milk, stir and let proof for 10 minutes

*Meanwhile, sift flour, add salt and cheese--stir.

*Pour milk mixture into flour mixture and knead until soft dough forms (I had to add more water)

*Form into large ball, place in clean greased bowl and cover with a tea towel.  Let rise 1 hour or until doubled.

*Punch down, place on a greased cookie sheet and form dragon.  Decorate as desired.  We also sprinkled the top of the dragon with dry dill, a bit of garlic salt and some shredded parmesan.

Bake at 375 for 20 or so minutes until dragon is golden brown. 

It turned out DE-LISH!

Here are some more pics from our day:

While Q and I baked, Little Man played with dry oats and cooking utensils.  Here's what the table looks like post-baking.

I keep "play oats" in a can.  They are fine for him to eat while he plays (and he does), but I don't bake or anything with them.  And when he finishes playing I pour the excess back in for next time.

Look at this girl doing dishes.  Mmmmm.

And him vacuuming...all the oats he threw on the floor.

 

 

There, that's better!  Q even wiped the table and chairs with some warm vanilla water to clean all the stickiness and add a nice smell to our kitchen.  Sorry, Alie, not even any crumbs on the floor for you.

Here's our dragon before baking.  I've learned to take a picture of bread creations because ya never know what will happen in the oven and we might pull out a blob!
We used dried veggies (which my kids refuse to eat) to decorate our dragon and almonds for the teeth and claws. 

Dried green bean eyes and dried beet chip scales.

He came out looking great!

Q got the honor of slaying the dragon.

Which she enjoyed immensely. 

And mmmmm that was a yummy dragon!