Students are welcome to try their culinary skills this Saturday at the Bread Baking Extravaganza, sponsored by Ohio State’s Bread Club.

OSU’s Bread Club is in its second year as a club and began when its president Grant Joslin, a third-year in anthropology, baked bread for his friends’ birthdays.

“My freshman year, two of my best friends in the dorm had birthdays a week apart from each other so a bunch of us got together to bake bread,” Joslin said. “That was really cool, so we started doing that almost the rest of the quarter. At the end of the year we were thinking if we incorporated as a club, maybe OSU will pay for some of this stuff, so we established as a club last year.”

Bread Club does not only make bread, but has expanded into baking other food as well, Joslin said.

“We’ve met probably nine of the 10 weeks this quarter, and we’ll do a different thing every week.” Joslin said. “We’ve made pasta from scratch, we’ve baked bagels and donuts and cakes and all sorts of things like that. We’re really a baking club, but Bread Club is a cool title so we kept it.”

Bread Club was officially registered as a club in fall of 2010. The club started with about 15 members and has grown to about 50 members.

As Bread Club is a relatively new club, the Bread Baking Extravaganza is the club’s big event for the year.

“It’s our first big event. We’ve done the involvement fair last spring and again this last fall. This is our first event where we are actually making bread,” said Jake Malesky, vice president of Bread Club and second-year in mechanical engineering.

Students in attendance are instructed how to bake a half-white, half-wheat everyday bread from a starter, which is made of yeast, filtered water and sugar. Joslin said breads that are made from a starter are quicker to make, but also more complicated.

“We are doing a really nice, really kind of complicated bread recipe. Anything you are doing with a starter is more complicated than just adding the powder to the granulated yeast,” Joslin said.

Students can customize their bread to their taste with mix-ins, including fruits and nuts, jalapeños, diced tomatoes, cheese or chocolate chips.

The Bread Baking Extravaganza is free for students and is paid for by the student activity fee. Students are welcome to come and make a loaf of bread and get to go home with the loaf of bread they made.

Joslin said his goal is for people to become aware of Bread Club and that people will attend.

“We’re hoping for about 40 (people to show up), which is about the capacity of the kitchen. We are hoping to get a lot of people in the club who don’t show up to meetings and hope that a bunch of people will bring friends or wander in from upstairs in the Union,” Joslin said.

Claudia Perez, a second-year in accounting, said the event could be fun and sounds interesting.

“I would go. I think any student would go to an event with free food,” Perez said. “It’s a good opportunity to interact with different people and get involved.”

Other students said it is unlikely they will attend.

“I don’t think I would go,” said Nathan Workman, a third-year in atmospheric sciences. “It is the week before finals and it’s not something I would be interested in or going to.”

The Bread Baking Extravaganza is from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday in the Ohio Union’s instructional kitchen located in the basement.