Five on Friday: Rainbow Bread Pointers

Every March we bake a few loaves of rainbow bread because we love seeing how long the bright colors take to go through our digestive systems rainbows and impressing the other kids in the cafeteria.

Having done this for a number of years, I've come up with some dos and don'ts for successful rainbow bread production to share with you:

1. Get over your fear of yeast bread. If I can do it, I swear you can too. I don't even follow the instructions that closely and it still comes out great.

2. If you want really vibrant color: get some gel food coloring. It's about 100,000 times better than the  liquid stuff from the supermarket.

3. After the dough rises the first time, divide it into seven bowls for the different colors. Be  generous with the gel. This is not the time to use Grandma's antique bread bowl. Most of the color will wash right out but . . . use caution. Most of my wooden spoons are sporting new dye jobs this week.

4. Grab some kids to knead the color in. All that slime making makes them excellent at getting the color consistently incorporated into the dough. Also they don't generally don't care if they get color all over their hands. Use rubber gloves if you, unlike most children, don't want to have food color all over your hands for a week.

Looking at this picture makes me feel like maybe I should have had a hair net on, too, to complete the look.

5. Use a rolling pin to roll out each color, being generous with additional flour (to help with the dough not sticking and to create a little bit of a barrier between the counter and the food coloring). I usually roll the red first and then after the orange is rolled out, I place it on top of the red roll them again together. Repeat with each color and then create loaves, place in greased pans to rise again and bake as directed.

Sometimes we switch it up and start with purple and end with red

Even if you miscalculate how much dough to put in the small pans, the results are still magical. And sort of trippy.