A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou ~

Today I ventured into my kitchen and set my sites on making bread. I can't tell you what set this in motion, but I can tell you I haven't made yeast bread for at least 15 years. I've made nut breads, sweet breads, zucchini breads, banana breads - but yeast bread has always kinda scared me.
Time to get past the fear.

Right away I realized I should not do this on the spur of the moment, since my yeast was a bit outdated, and for some reason not kept in my fridge - but in my cabinet. (I had aspirations during the holidays to make bread that never materialized) But~ my dads voice was in my ear saying, "If you don't have the right tools for the job, make use of the tools you have"...and I forged on.Just as I feared, I had difficulty getting the dough to rise, ended up having to force a rise on the top of the stove w/ radiant heat from the oven...

It smelled glorious in the oven and looked good when it came out too! :)
However; it did not rise as well as it should have, and ended up kinda heavy and crusty. :(

That's okay - we had some with dinner while it was still warm. It tasted fine, but was not light and airy like I had hoped. The wheat bread has just now come from the oven, and seems to have suffered the same weighty fate. Damn old yeast anyway.

Not to worry though, I am not one to give up. I will be making a trip to the grocery this week and I have yeast and more flour on that list...
In the meantime, we'll eat the somewhat weighted bread, and I have learned a valuable lesson.

Bread and I are old friends, we will eventually work out our issues. ;) LOL.