My first (mostly successful) attempt at bread!

So.  Confession time: I love bread, but I hate yeast.  Well, that's not entirely true.  It would be more accurate to say "yeast does not like me and I am terrified of it".  Whenever I tried making bread in the past I'd end up with some weird, lumpy thing with the density of rubber.  It was bad.  So for years I resigned myself to just accepting that yeast and I were never meant to be, kind of like star crossed lovers.

I was sitting around last weekend, going through my spice cupboard (I would show you but it's embarrassing -  it's currently just a big pile of bulk Winco bags that I haven't sorted through yet!) and realized that somewhere along the line, I bought three packets of yeast.  Well, I rationalized, since I already have the yeast, wouldn't it be more of a waste to not use it?  Yes.  That was my logic.

So I made Kim's Garlic Breadsticks and Chinese Cocktail Buns, neither of which turned out atrociously!


The breadsticks:

Proofing the yeast:

I even got to use my handy little thermometer I bought  from Amazon for about $8.

 15 minutes later I had this... which (from its lack of bubbles) probably meant it wasn't fully alive.  But I plunged ahead anyway (partially from stubbornness and partially from ignorance... okay mostly it was the latter), and proceeded to mix up the dough.  Let it sit (I like this part about baking very very much) and then cut it into strips.

Resting in the sun... ignore that strangely deformed breadstick on the right.

After a few...um... hours... (sidebar: I realize you're not supposed to let them sit for like 3 hours, I just got busy).  I had fat, puffy little breadsticks:

Even the little dinky one!

Brushed with garlic and butter and baked for about 10 minutes.  These turned out... dense (but not necessarily in a bad way, unlike my previous attempts).  Maybe I over-kneaded it?  Either way, they were still really great with our pizza.