3rd Times the Charm with bread

So remember when I talked about my failure of making bread in my earlier post? The one with the pretzels and what not. After that fail, I tried again. I failed. Now I tried again today. I DIDN'T FAIL!!! :c) It's a great achievement. What happened was probably the dry yeast I was using from my mom's cabinet. Now I should have known not to use it. The instructions in the back were all in a foreign language for goodness sake. Good thing I ran out of milk when I decided to take a crack at making dough again because I bought some American brand yeast, too. So my earlier mistake was in just throwing the yeast in the dry flour without proofing it first which didn't activate the yeast so my bread didn't rise.


I learnt that to proof yeast:
-stir the packet of active dry yeast into a 1/4 c. of warm water, 
-then add a teaspoon of sugar and wait till the yeast grows x2 it's original size so you will see when it has proofed, as people call it. 

Here is the recipe again for the dough.

I made some bread sticks and rolls out of them. The dip is just balsamic and extra virgin olive oil which was what we had. I don't think I like this brand of olive oil though. It kind of made the taste of the dip a little bitter.  I also need to work on a better way to kneed my dough or something because every one of my rolls cracked where the seems were from kneeding. ergh... oh well.
I also put some different seasonings on each one of the breads.
Honestly though... I didn't care for the taste of this recipe. It was kind of bland.
I also don't think 10-15 minutes is enough baking time.
Also, if you're planning to make burger buns, The recipe will make 8 buns, not 12 or else they will be too small. Those are the size in the picture shown when you divide it into 12 portions.
Anywayyyyyssssssss.............. I feel good to have finally gotten the bread to rise, but I'm still disappointed that it didn't come out better tasting and prettier.
:(
):