Bread = Fail

I'm not sure what it is about me, my house, and bread making - but i'm just no good at it! I rock muffins, quick breads, pancakes, you name it - but yeasty leavened bread just dosn't work for me. I can never get the stuff to rise at ALL much less double, and the resultant bread is always tasty, but dense and overly nutritious.

My friend Heather was recently nice enough to send me a well photographed 'how to' to baking a simple sandwich bread from The Bread Bible. Simple.
Fail.

I followed all the steps, but messed up the first one pretty majorly, don't have a mixer, and don't know how to knead. This was what went into the oven: an unrisen lump of dough:

blurry photos are lame.

I guess it's a good thing that i'm no good at baking bread, cuz homemade bread is really delicious and i end up eating gobs of it at 11:30 pm slathered in honey, peanut butter, cheese, or hot sauce - none of these are good for the waistline when you spend your days sitting at a drafting table, drawing cute things.  It would be nice to save money on bread though - so feel free to send me your fool proof multigrain bread recipes. For now, i'll stick to my recently made muffins and try some cool variations. I have some cranberries in the freezer and the jalapeno plants are falling over with fruit. Jalapeno muffins anyone?