You might remember Tribe member Elizabeth Jancewicz from her craftsy invitations that she made using a sewing machine. Her creativity apparently does not stop there. Here she shows us how she made the most colorful communion bread we ever did see.
A friend who got married two years ago told us that serving communion during their wedding was one of the most meaningful things of their entire ceremony. In thinking about it, I really love the idea of being able to interact on such a deep personal and very spiritual way with our guests during the ceremony, instead of waiting until the greeting line at the end. Plus, over my spiritual life, communion in itself has grown more and more into a strong meaningful event between myself and my relationship with God, and I'm really excited to include this aspect into such an important day for us.
But of course, we couldn't exactly just have plain ol' bread!
A little while ago I saw the most awesome rainbow cake on the Tribe. However, I gave up sweets for lent, so instead one evening I made blue, red, and yellow bread with my parents' three-year-old foster boy, Jaiden. When that came out fairly successfully, I figured I just had to make RAINBOW BREAD!
What follows are some photos my awesome future husband took of the process:
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It's just a basic white bread recipe (we have a bread machine, which makes it so super easy). I divided the dough up into six pieces and kneaded in food colouring. The super cool part of this was as I did it, I taught 3-year-old Jaiden how to mix colours! Now he knows that red and blue make purple, red and yellow make orange, and blue and yellow make green. Him knowing this by heart makes him smarter than almost all of my 160 art students, who range from the ages of eight up through twenty!
After I kneaded the colour into each piece, I rolled out two of the pieces (purple and blue) separately, wet the top of the purple one with water, then laid the blue piece on top and rolled it again, “gluing” the two flat colours together. Then I'd roll out the next piece (green), wet the top of the blue, place green on top, roll them again, etc. You get the idea.
Then I rolled the whole thing up into a solid colourful loaf. (Wetting the top layer, which as you can see was red, so the whole thing would be tight.)
I think the flour caked around my engagement ring is hilarious, and makes me even more glad I don't have a big bulky rock.
And there's Jaiden! He's a Naskapi Native American (Canadian) and most likely the cutest child ever.
Is this not the coolest bread you have EVER seen?! I just love the idea of ripping off a piece of this to hand to our guests to dip in the wine during communion. Oh, and of course, in case I didn't make this clear, this was just a trial. I'll make a nice fresh loaf for the wedding, haha. Almost two months!
Oh my lord!!! that is definitely the coolest bread i have every seen. And now i must make my own! can you imagine eating a sandwich with that?…..
Just a bit of advice from your friendly not-so-local pastry chef. When you’re making bread, or really anything like that that sticks to the table and requires flour to be on your work surface, use a pastry brush or old (clean) paintbrush to brush off all of the extra flour. Less flour means your bread is less likely to come out dry. Also, try brushing the top with egg wash or, even better, melted butter! It will give the purple layer a really pretty shine. Bread looks awesome! This is such a great idea!
This is ridiculously fantastic
THAT IS AWESOME!!! (And that little boy is absolutely one of the cutest children I’ve ever seen!)
Oh man that looks amazing. I wonder if you could roll it different ways and spell out something (a multi-loaf experiment?)?
I sort of have a thing about bread that appears to be blue or green… but when I saw the first photo I was like POTATO BREAD WITH PURPLE POTATOES? Suddenly inspired.
I’m fascinated by the idea of using communion as a ritual to bring the community together around your wedding, and I think your bread is gorgeous.
Is it going to be a formal communion service, with a priest or clergy person performing the ritual? Can I ask you how you intend to handle non-Christian guests? I’m Jewish, and I’ve witnessed communion services with interest and respect, but I’d never take communion myself.
It will be “formal”, but not “orthodox”. We’re hoping that the whole thing will be very casual, and probably announce that anyone who would like to can come up and join with us. I myself have sat out of communion events simply because I didn’t feel comfortable going up. We’re viewing it as sharing a meal, a part of ourselves, and our own spirituality with those we love; but not forcing anything on anyone.
We’re doing a communion as well, for entirely this purpose – of uniting and including people in a beautiful ritual! I plan on getting my ‘women’ together to kneed the bread in a little prayer ceremony/meditation ritual. Our phrasing will be something like ‘you are invited to join in communion or in private reflection’ as we have friends and family who aren’t going to join in and that is completely fine.
This idea for bread is just fabulous. I have an almost-three-year-old myself who loves to help me bake. He would love this!
I also have a question related to Rymenhild’s – if it’s going to be a formal, clergy-celebrated ritual, have you consulted your person about whether your recipe works for them? I know that many Catholic priests, for example, would not use your bread as it has been leavened. I expect that in other rites it varies by celebrant also, since technically the Catholic Church doesn’t recognize the gluten-free wafers my Celiac father takes as truly holy…Anyway, that was my first concern after “Oooooh pretty bread!” I’m totally going to try making some, too!
We’re not Catholic. I commented back to Rymenhild if you’d like to see that.
Wow. I desperately want to TRY to make this, just to see if I can! You make it look so fancy and easy.
I can’t even handle how amazing that is.
that is truly awesome. maybe I’ll have to break out that never-used bread maker my Mum owns, haha. And reminds me I need to ask the fiancée about having communion at our ceremony…
I LOVE THIS BREAD!! So pretty and gorgeous and even though I don’t eat wheat, I would sacrifice the pain I would feel for hours afterwards for a piece of this fantastic bread!
Rainbow bread needs (kneads?) to be made for every day occasions! 🙂 I’ve got this whole long weekend off and I’m going to be busting out batches of rainbow bread!
Why wait for a wedding. I say Rainbow Bread should be our Daily Bread 🙂
This bread is fantastic! Can’t wait to see this whole wedding!
What a fabulous idea! Thinking about the ‘rainbow’ symbology too – After the flood God created the rainbow as a visual reminder that he would never ‘purge’ the earth like that again. Essentially, he’ll love us and have us as we are, regardless of our deficiencies. Add to that the symbology of communion and you have a ceremony in your wedding that is just laden with love. And an AWESOME visual treat as well. Possibly the best twist on traditional EVER! Kudos. 🙂
I fully admit that my first thought was “Rainbow bread? For communion???” And then I mentally squirmed as I tried to reconcile an awesomely amazing loaf of bread with the fact that I was surprised that I didn’t like the idea of it in a communion service (I’m clearly more of a high church Anglican than I’d ever want to admit 😉 and not that it’s got anything whatsoever to do with me anyway! 🙂 ) But anyway, reading this elaboration on the rainbow symbolism has just made me go “woh!” and completely re-evaluate what I thought of the idea and now it’s all completely amazing 😀 (Not that my vicar would probably agree but hey-ho)
Thanks for the inspiration! I am a professional baker with a son in kindergarten. For his first week of school I am seriously considering making a loaf so I can send him with a special sandwich. We’ll have so much fun!
This is the coolest thing ever! I can’t wait to try it!!
This is pretty bread! They also sell this at publix
I am so happy I found this!!! I am going to try and make it for my sons birthday!!! Thank you
I just had another idea for a variation on this–roll the colors into long tubes, twirl sections of two, then braid! [Use a Challah recipe?] 😉
Rainbow Challah??!! Amazing!!!
So very cool! It are things like this that make each wedding day unique!