Success! After a do-over due to failed yeast, I made a tasty loaf of Classic Sandwich Bread from the King Arthur Flour website. I used nonfat milk and 2 cups of white bread flour and one cup of whole wheat. It turned out delicious!

My first try, which failed, was because my yeast was dead. I followed the directions (I thought), and it smelled yeasty, but once I mixed it all together and kneaded it in the mixer, with the dough hook, it never got past the sticky stage. I let it sit overnight but it never got to the ‘fingerprint doesn’t bounce back’ stage of the first rising. I googled a lot for ‘failed dough’ and tried some of the dough to make breadsticks but they didn’t quite taste right.

This time, I made sure the water was nice and hot (110 degrees F) and stuck the measuring cup with the water and yeast into our turned-off oven (since the rest of the apartment is so cold). You can see from the pictures that it is much more bubbly and frothy when the yeast is actually working. After that, I just followed the recipe and used both the thump and temperature test at the end. Result: tasty home-made bread!

Bad yeast

Good yeast