Bread on the Brain

I've been looking forward to baking my own bread for a while now. I think store bought bread leaves a little to be desired in terms of taste, particularly whole grain bread. Also, it's cheaper homemade, especially since we never seem to make it through a whole loaf of bread before it gets funky, and we end up throwing a lot of it away. Plus, there's the coolness factor, I would feel so much more productive and wifely and motherly if I could bake a mean loaf of bread. In short, I would officially ROCK, at least in my opinion.  

I've been perusing books about baking bread and have placed a few on hold at the library. In the meantime, I thought I would try this recipe, and it was pretty much your garden variety disaster. I couldn't even bring myself to take pictures to share with you. I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the dough never seemed to rise (yes Mom, I did use yeast- I can hear you asking me that as I type), which resulted in two pretty heinous looking loaves of bread. The bread actually tasted good, so I've been using it for sandwiches and toast. I don't think I'll try that particular recipe again.

I recently discovered foodgawker (enter at your own risk) and I was up until 12:30 last night searching through pictures of bread for a recipe that I thought might be good to try next. None of the savory bread recipes jumped out at me but I found a banana-chocolate chip bread/cake that looks really good. If all goes well this afternoon with the little flower, I may give it a go. Not to wish away this time, but I look forward to being able to cook with the little flower (and daddy, of course) someday. So many good times ahead...let's just hope one of them involves banana bread!