Great Bread Adentures #1

One of my goals this year is to learn how to make bread and I have devoted March to perfecting my skills.

In other words, if I don't get it right after trying hard for a month, the words "baking" and "bread" will never be uttered in the same sentence around here.

And if they are, one can only imagine the consequences. 

In preparation of the Great Bread Adventure, I ordered up the most necessary and needed ingredient:

Active Dry Yeast

Why did I order it? Because a 2 pound bag was cheaper than a little tiny jar.  And being the overly ambition and practical person that I am, the more yeast the better.

Right?

How much bread can one bake with 2 pounds of dry yeast?    

Two words: A lot! 

Or is that one word? 

For our first adventure, Addison and I decided on homemade pizza dough for two reasons:

1).  We love pizza 

2).  If it ended up tasting bad, the pizza sauce would make it edible.

Hopefully.  

I settled on this Easy Pizza Dough Recipe from FineCooking.com.  

Any recipe with "easy" as the first word wins hands down in my book.

It took all of a few minutes to mix up the dough and begin kneading into little dough balls.  We placed them on a cookie sheet to rise and after 45 minutes, we had these little beauties: 

Addison decided she wanted to give shaping the crust a try. 

 She quickly discovered that spinning the dough in the air was going to take a little practice.  

 Looking more like a volcano for a science project than a pizza....

After deciding on what toppings to go with, Addison was ready to put hers in the oven.

 

 

 (You may be asking "what toppings?".  I did the same thing.)

After hers was all finished, she politely asked that I do not photograph her food.  

Judging by my food photography skills, I can't blame her.  

Despite not looking very fancy, it sure was tasty!

We decided to give cinnamon rolls a whirl next.

After all, we have two pounds of yeast to use up....