The most colorful communion bread that you’ll ever make yourself

Guest post by Elizabeth Jancewicz

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.

rainbow communion bread 10

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:

rainbow communion bread 1

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!

rainbow communion bread 2

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.)

rainbow communion bread 3

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.

Check out these awesome layers!
Check out these awesome layers!

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And there's Jaiden! He's a Naskapi Native American (Canadian) and most likely the cutest child ever.

Ready to go in the oven.
Ready to go in the oven.
It's so colourful! This is after I let it rise for half an hour.
It's so colourful! This is after I let it rise for half an hour.
Fully baked!
Fully baked!
And sliced!
And sliced!

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!

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