When I talk to people about baking bread, one of the first things I usually hear is "Oh, but I'm afraid of yeast." So if you feel this way, you are definitely not alone! I'm not going to try and convince you that there's nothing to be afraid of or that the satisfaction of a perfect loaf of bread is worth all the failed loaves that came before, but I will make a confession: I, too, once feared yeast...
When I first started baking after college, loaf after loaf came out as hard as a brick. I couldn't figure it out. I thought I wasn't activating the yeast properly, so I kept dissolving it in hotter and then boiling water with more and more sugar. I finally called my dad (a life-long baker) and told him the whole story. He broke it to me gently: "Emma, you're killing that yeast. Don't use boiling water."
Oh.
And the rest, as they say, was history.
The thing is that yeast is a living organism. This is maybe part of what scares people so much! With baking soda, you just add liquid and the bread rises like magic. With yeast, you have to be a little more sensitive to the needs of those little cells quietly working away in your bread dough.
When you're baking, you have to start thinking about the temperature in the kitchen, how humid it is, how other ingredients in the dough are affecting the yeast, and so on. And then you have to adjust your method or your ingredients to compensate. This can feel a little odd and unintuitive at first, but the more you bake, the more it becomes second nature.
Here are some tips and tricks that I've picked up over the years:
•Store dry yeast in the freezer. Yeast will last almost indefinitely when frozen.
•You do not need hot water to activate the yeast. A small amount of room-temperature or slightly warm water works best. Let it sit for a minute or two and then stir it with a spoon or a fork until the yeast is completely dissolved. It should be smooth and silky.
•You do not need sugar to activate the yeast. This is a half-true old wives tale leftover from when yeast wasn't preserved as well as it is now. A pinch of sugar will make yeast bubble up, thus proving that the yeast is still active and hasn't expired. However, it doesn't actually help (or hinder) the rising of the bread.
•Yeast will feed on the sugar and starches in your dough and expire CO2, which is what causes the dough to rise.
•Yeast feeds and reproduces best between 70° and 80°. If your house is too cold, turn on the stove for just two minutes and then let your dough rise in there. (Don't forget to turn the stove off!) If your house is too warm, find a cooler place for it to rise. Sometimes this is also the turned-off oven (though don't pre-heat it this time).
•Yeast goes dormant below 50°.
•One tablespoon of yeast will leaven 3-6 cups of flour.
•Fat, eggs, dairy, salt, and cold conditions slow down yeast activity. Lean doughs made of mostly flour and water will rise faster than rich doughs that are made with more fat, eggs, or dairy. Rich doughs like cinnamon rolls, monkey bread, and brioche may not rise as much or may simply take longer to rise than other doughs.
If you're eager but nervous to start baking, the best advice that I can give you is to buddy up with someone who's already been baking for a while. It makes such a difference to have someone there watching you, talking you through each step, and showing you how it's done.
If you have any questions, ask away. For as many novice bakers we have here on the site, there are an equal number of experienced bakers! One of us should be able to help!
Related: Weekend Cooking: Bake Bread
(Images: Emma Christensen for the Kitchn)
10 Low-Budget Pantry Items Everyone Should Have
Recipe: Spring Fruit and Nut Tabouli
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Monterey Pitcher fr...
Jessica's Crafted Space
Ana Creates a Community at Home
Helpful points. As recommended in Peter Reinhart's amazing "The Break Baker's Apprentice", I've become a fan of "instant" yeast, which doesn't require proofing. You just mix it in with the flour. A bag of this lasts forever refrigerated or frozen. I like SAF brand.
I also used to be afraid of yeast, but no-knead bread got me to try it. After that initial success, i've felt a lot more confident, and have used yeast in bread rolls and sweet doughs all over the place! Its very freeing to not have to read a recipe and think "oh. yeast. let's find something else..." :)
When I moved to a new crazy-weather climate and a new housing-type, I no longer could get my bread to rise. I tried the stove tip listed above--and a million other things. None of them worked. When I explained my problem to my younger sister (an avid baker), she said simply: "put the dough in the bed when it is rising." Now, I securely wrap the bowl containing rising dough in either plastic wrap or a dish towel and place the whole thing under my down comforter. No matter what crazy weather is going on outside, my bread rises perfectly everytime!
My name is Michelle, and I fear yeast. Perhaps this should be my new year's resolution, to bake and to use yeast. It would definitely expand my cooking horizons greatly.
Along with an oven turned on for 30 seconds then off, or a microwave with a warm cup of water in the corner, one of my favorite rising places is on top of my dryer in the laundry room. I don't just get my laundry done, I end up with great bread!
I think if you're new to bread the smartest thing you can do is read a few books, use a thermometer to make sure your water/liquid is around 110 degrees, and weigh your ingredients the first few times.
the gods mocked me just a little today when this post came out two days after i baked my first yeast bread ever. i can barely keep basil alive in my window sill, so the thought of being responsible for the growth of another being from womb-packet to death-toast was not pleasant.
I don't quite fear yeast, but it just hasn't ever seemed to work properly for me. My breads rise, but they're still too dense. The latest information that I have found is that I'm probably not kneading it enough; any insight from anyone?
It's true about the kneading. I think some people's fears about yeast are misplaced. It's actually the flour that's giving some people trouble. As you knead dough you're connecting gluten strands. These strands build a network of webs where the gases from the yeasts get trapped. So if the flour isn't kneaded properly the gluten strands might not be connecting properly, therefore, the gases from the yeast can get trapped very well in the dough, making it dense.
All bread types are different, but you can tell when your bread (most varieties) has been kneaded enough because it will be more elastic, meaning, when you stretch it it wants to come back to its original shape. Also, if you gently stretch the dough you should be able to form a thin membrane of dough that light comes through, called a window.
Now, I have never made no knead bread and am not sure what causes the gluten strands to join up with that bread, so this only addresses possible problems with kneaded breads.
I hope this helps a little! It's a very rough explanation, and certainly doesn't address the needs of certain flours or certain breads.
It's impossible to stress out about yeast when you make no-knead bread. We've been at it for about a year, and it's joy to have teriffic home cooked, crusty bread on a whim. I for one welcome our new yeast overlords.
After making pizza dough for a while now, I think I may be ready to venture into bread. I am not a baker, but that bear bread recipe and a year in bread blog is VERY tempting.
I always use my oven to proof my pizza dough, don't have to turn it on (its gas) I put a thermostat in there and its always just under a 100 degrees.
Instant yeast! It's the stuff you use for bread machines, Fleischmann's brand will say either "RapidRise" or "Bread Machine Yeast."
As bos_ted said, it can stand up to much more abuse. No need to bloom it, and you can add it to the flour WITH the salt. (If you don't use instant, you need to wait until you've mixed some of the ingredients, or else the salt will pretty much kill the yeast.)
And, you don't need to worry about the temperature of the water. (Though boiling might be a bad idea, anything not ice cold will work.) As bobcatsteph said, regular yeast needs the water at a certain temperature, or else you will kill it - or it will take a long time to wake up.
Along the lines of water, if you have hard water, this could affect your bread as well. (Even more important for pie crust!) Try using store bought water to eliminate problems with that.
I agree that underkneading is probably causing the denseness. It could also be too much flour. I find that in the beginning, when you're still trying to figure out what a dough should feel like, using an accurate scale is absolutely essential. I baked brick-like loaves too, until I got a scale and got a feel for an elastic dough. You can check out my breads on flickr.
jessekl & bubble, you've both got some beautiful breads to show and I appreciate your help. I'm going to keep trying until I get it right! I have a couple of questions though: how much is a "cup" supposed to weigh when the recipe calls for "cups" of flour? I think you may be onto something with the too much flour thing as well; when I follow a recipe and mix everything together, it seems to sticky when it should be ready to knead. What's the deal?
The standard cup is 5 oz. The wetter doughs (where the water is more than 60% of the flour weight) are very sticky in the beginning and become less so as the gluten is developed during kneading. I would recommend checking out some bread books from your local library, like any of Peter Reinhart's books, or Daniel Leader's, or Dan Lepard's. They have good photos of doughs at all stages of the process and give both volumetric and gravimetric measurements. One more thing that can help is allowing the flour to autolyze, that is, mixing water and flour and letting them sit for about an hour before adding the yeast and the salt. It makes the dough much easier to work with.
One last thing: check out this site for more tips, advice, and pics. It's a community for bread bakers and I find it a great resource for all things bread-related.
The only time I've had trouble with bread yeast was when I lived in Boulder, due to the altitude. Handmade or bread machine, I had a 50% success rate on my bread rising.
Ironically, that's where I made the best homebrew ever. Never had a problem with my ale yeasts.
AAAAAHHHHHH {:-O
Thank you for this post! I pulled some info from it for a blog post of my own:
http://entreethegiant.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/foolproof-pizza-dough/
Fun fact: your cinnamon swirl raisin bread was my first attempt at baking with yeast. What a wonderful recipe that is - I have recommended it to all my friends and family.
I'm I the only one who is cursed by constant failure with Fleischmann's yeast? Every so often I forget that it NEVER WORKS and try again. I always check the expiration date before purchasing and measure the temperature of my water before adding the yeast and it ALWAYS FAILS. I went through six packets this evening following the instructions to the letter and not one of them worked.
I'm almost new to bread baking, but am not happy with the way my doughs rise.
I have found that when they rise, they tend to go sideways rather than upward, and if I bake in a bread tin, the doughs sort of flop over the top of the tin and are difficult to get out.
Do you have any idea why this should be?