I received a Dough Lab in exchange for my honest review.

We try to get the kids doing as many things that get them thinking and learning.  I was excited to find the DoughLab from Magical Microbes, which has a variety of STEM kits for kids.  My daughter has been into cooking a lot lately, so I had a feeling she would have a lot of fun with this.  Turns out she was very excited to use it, and begged me relentlessly to open the kit – so as soon as we had time, we got started!

DoughLab

The kit has just about everything you need besides water, which is great – no trips to the store required!

DoughLab

While our project below shows the main experiment, there are other activities in the book.

“Perform over 5 experiments to find your perfect bread recipe and learn about yeast and gluten.”

DoughLab

We checked out the supplies and got busy making bread, which my daughter couldn’t wait to do.  The ingredients are so clear, it made it easy to go step-by-step and be careful.  We checked off the boxes as we went along, and at one point my husband came home from work and I had to go to our school open house night, so he was able to help pick up where we left off.  Sometimes my daughter needs help focusing on what we are doing, and having the steps numbered with boxes was very helpful.

Dough Lab

We started our experiment by labeling our containers and filling them with different ingredients.

DoughLab

We added salt, sugar, and yeast to some of the flour.

DoughLab

Once the mixes were complete, and mixed into dough, we placed gloves on the containers.  This is a good time to make some guesses as far as what will happen!

DoughLab

The excitement was building as we waited for at least one of the gloves to fill!

Then it was time to pop the dough into the oven.  The cool part of this experiment is that it is edible!  So you’ve got kids thinking about ingredients and mixtures and how it affects things like bread rising and taste.  I managed to snap a photo after the bread was done (but not fast enough before one of the kinds of bread had been sampled!).

DoughLab Bread

This was a very fun project.  I try to let my kids lead these kinds of activities, so I let my 8-year-old try to be as independent as possible when doing the experiment.  My goal was to follow along and make sure she was following the directions correctly.  I love that this kit is so rewarding because you get some actual bread.  And regardless of if the bread is what your child expected, they learn about practical things, like how yeast works in cooking.

Check about this video about the DoughLab:

 

Check out DoughLab at

https://www.magicalmicrobes.com/