Everybody has some good memory about the smell of fresh bread... grandmothers cooking, steam rising from the first cut in the loaf, butter melted over a crisp, toasted slice at breakfast... Well, I finally broke down and decided it was time to fling some flour around in my kitchen. Come on, how hard can a loaf of bread be?

I attempted to bake a loaf (without instructions of course) and created an indestructible square loaf of the densest, hardest bread I've ever seen. After four of these bricks (even with instructions), I finally asked around and found some sound advice from none other than a grandma. There's things the recipes fail to mention. So, for all novices who are tired of cutting very thing slices and adding a whole lot of butter to make the bread slices taste better, here's a very short, but bombproof guide to making good bread without fail.

Bread yeast, or "Rapid Rise", yeast is easy to find in the supermarket. I won't go into the complete taxonomy/phylogeny of it, but will say it is alive and can die. Enough said. Here's what the recipe's don't tell you: if you don't activate the yeast, you will make a brick. Your dough will not rise unless it is activated! To activate the yeast, stick it in a cup of 110 degree Faranheit water (let your water get hot out of the faucet, it'll do) and stir in a packet of yeast. Let it stand for a minute until you see it "bloom" as shown on the right.

Make your dough too dry, it won't rise; make it too wet, you have a mess. To get your dough just right, stir flour into the wet ingredients until it forms a doughball. When you can stick a fork in it and let it stand, you're there. For better instructions on this, Jaques Pepin has a great web site with a slideshow for kneading dough.

All the recipes say, let the dough double... this is exactly right, but it won't happen right unless you have a place for the dough to rise. Stick your dough into a covered container and let it sit in a warm spot. I stick it in the sun, works great. It should rise like the pictures below. If it doesn't, either you didn't wait long enough (20-40 min.) or your yeast is bad.

The crust will come out dark or light depending on the ingredients. If you add milk, you will have a darker crust. One trick for good crusts, however, is to brush on melted butter and egg white just before sticking it in the oven. This seems to make a light, crispy crust.

Here's a recipe that is perfect for the first loaf:
• You will need: Bread flour, yeast packet, sugar, small bowl, large bowl, fork, oil or butter
• Add to large bowl: 1 cup flour and 1/3 cup sugar
• Add to small bowl: 3/4 cup hot water from tap, activate yeast as described above
• Combine active yeast-water to large bowl and stir with a fork.
• If too dry, add water in small amounts until the fork can barely stir.
• Add flour slowly until the fork forms a doughball with stirring.
• Flop dough onto a floured surface and knead.
• Let it rise until double.
• Flour you hands, remove it from the container, and reknead. Put it into a bread pan, cover, and let rise until double.
• Stick it into a preheated oven (350) for 15-20 minutes. This can vary, so the best thing to do is tap the loaf in after ten minutes. If is sounds and feels hollow, it is done. Also, add butter to the crust after 5 minutes if you want.

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