Published: August 27, 2008 11:37 am            

Great bread

DUNCAN — When Kaitlyn Shondelmyer decided to enter this year’s Wheathearts Bread Baking Contest at the Stephens County Free Fair, she went the extra mile.

She even grew some of the ingredients she used in her winning loaf.

Kaitlyn, 15, is no stranger to the winner’s circle.

She has won grand champion honors for two years straight in the Junior Division.

This year, she chose to make Cracked Wheat Butternut Bread, and used butternut squash from the family’s garden in a recipe she developed herself.

And that was no easy task, said her mother, Ann Shondelmyer.

“We love butternut squash, but it’s not an easy thing to grow in Oklahoma. It’s more of a Northern thing. We moved here from Pennsylvania four years ago, so my husband decided to try it and has had success getting it to grow here.”

The competition is sponsored by the Oklahoma Wheathearts through the Oklahoma Wheat Commission.

Kaitlyn’s win at the county level entitles her to go on to state-level competition at the Oklahoma State Fair.

Kaitlyn, daughter of David and Ann Shondelmyer of Duncan, is a 10th-grade homeschool student. She is one of the vice presidents of the Stephens County 4-H Club, and is president of the Star 4-H Club.

Earlier this month, Kaitlyn was one of two 4-H’ers to receive the American Youth Foundation's National Leadership Award in recognition of personal integrity, balanced living and potential for leadership.

The honor was presented by Stephens County 4-H at the award ceremony held Aug. 5 at the Stephens County Fair & Expo Center.

The National Leadership Award is presented each year by the American Youth Foundation (AYF) in cooperation with the county 4-H educator.

Bread-baking skills run in Kaitlyn’s family. Her brother, Ben, took reserve champion honors in the senior division of the Wheathearts contest.

Brother and sister have gone back and forth for the past couple of years, first one winning top honors, then the other, their mother said.

Kaitlyn took her recipe from last year and changed it around a bit, adding the cooked and mashed squash for flavor and nutrition.

“It took a bit of experimentation. She had to reduce the amount of liquid in the recipe, because the squash is part liquid and part solid. Putting squash in homemade bread could definitely be a way to get kids to eat more vegetables,” Ann Shondelmyer said.

“She was quite pleased with her win. We had a minor crisis over the weekend when the heating element in our stove went out. We had to scramble for the next couple of days to find the part and get it installed in time for them to get their bread baked. A friend of ours had offered her oven, so we had a backup plan, but it’s much easier to bake in our own oven. My husband managed to get it fixed in time, but things were a bit tenuous for a while there. Kaitlyn actually entered three breads in this year’s contest, and won first place on all of them. My son had to bake his, too, so Wednesday morning, four loaves of bread left our kitchen,” Shondelmyer said.

When she’s not busy with 4-H activities, baking and her homeschool work — she has a lot of homework for school, her mother said — Kaitlyn sings with a homeschool choir in Oklahoma City, and enjoys singing in the youth choir at Immanuel Baptist Church, where she is an active member.

        

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