I see you call yourself Bostonpat.....would your mother by chance have used a recipe from the Fanny Farmer cook book? Also known as the Boston Cookbook? That's what my mother and grandmother used.... I have linked to the page about making bread. Scroll down the recipe I was thinking of is the one called "milk and water bread". It uses half milk and half water for the liquid, no sugar and 2 tablespoons of fat. Yes it calls for a yeast cake, but I use all forms of yeast interchangeably without altering the recipe at all.....and I know annie does the same. I'm not quite into the scientific reasons like grainlady is, but it works for me. However I don't proof bread by the clock, but by watching it and poking it. Also a well kneaded dough makes for a fine textured bread. I suspect you are hooked! And will soon be into whole grains and dried fruits and experimenting with add ins! Harmless hobby....but it is fattening!! Linda c

Thanks Teresa. terrapots - It sounds like you used the correct yeast, but you may have: a. Over-proofed the dough (allowed it to rise more than double) during the first rise (bulk fermentation) and it didn't have any "umph" left for the final proof after it was panned - especially since you didn't have any oven spring to the loaves. If the dough is under-proofed, you generally get oven-spring but the sides will shred (crack open). b. Allowed the dough to rise in a temperature that was too warm, thereby killing some of the yeast. Do you pre-heat the oven for a bit and then put the dough in the oven to rise during the 1st rise? It's easy to have the warmed oven TOO hot when using this method. Most people don't check the internal temperature of the oven. When you place the dough into the oven, the yeast on the outside of the dough will quickly die if the ambient temperature 140°F or hotter. The temperature should be below 90°F. If you use your oven for a proofing box, just use the light in the oven for warmth (turn it on to warm the oven when you first start making your bread) and check the temperature. In my oven, it's between 80°-85°F on the opposite side of the oven from the light - which is a great temperature for dough rising. c. Your yeast may not be active. I once purchased a new package of SAF-Instant Yeast that was well before the use-by date that wouldn't rise at all. When you use bulk yeast, it's good to test it. Especially if you don't use it very often and it's in storage a long time. To test yeast: In a 1-cup glass measuring cup place 1/4 c. warm water, 1 t. sugar, 1-1/2 t. yeast. Wait 10 minutes. If the yeast is active, the mixture should be up to the 1/2 c. line. If the rise isn't to the 1/2-cup line, then you know the yeast isn't active enough to raise dough to double. Helpful hint: when proofing yeast in water/sweetener, add the yeast to the water, not the water to the yeast. The activity of water being dumped on the yeast can actually kill some of them. If you vigorously stir the mixture, you can kill some of the yeast. If you're like most people you use a slant-sided bowl for the dough to rise in. The slanting sides is an inaccurate way to judge when the dough has doubled. It's much smaller on the bottom of the bowl and gets larger as it goes up. It's easy to under- and over-proof dough in a slant sided bowl because you're not exactly sure what or where "double" is. And once again, dough doesn't know how to tell time, so the instructions in the recipe for rising times is just a good (or bad) guess. I'd suggest using a dough rising bucket to help gauge when dough has doubled in the first rise. You can find them at restaurant supply stores or on-line from King Arthur Flour or other on-line sources. They call them food storage containers at restaurant supply stores. They come in both square and round models at the restaurant supply stores - I have some of both. I normally use a round 2-quart size (usually 2-1/2# dough), but I have them in several sizes for larger amounts of dough. As long as it has a tight fitting lid and straight sides, you're in business for a dough rising bucket. It's the perfect environment for dough rising. No drafts, hold and provides it's own moisture, etc. If you happen to have an empty plastic ice cream bucket, that would work. The dough rising buckets/food storage containers have graduated measurements on the side, which makes it nice to use. If you use another type of straight-sided plastic container that doesn't have measurements on it, just use a ruler to measure the dough. Handle the dough with oiled hands. Pat it into the bottom of the plastic container and put on the lid. Measure where the dough is up the side of the container with a ruler. Take that measure and double it and place a piece of masking tape there - make sure you remember (or mark) whether the top of the tape, or the bottom of the tape, is where the dough will be double. When the dough rises to that mark, that means the dough has doubled in bulk. If the dough measures 1-1/2-inches, then it's double at 3-inches - if it measures 2-inches, then it's double at 4-inches, and so on. You can place the dough in the dough rising bucket in the oven with the light on, as a nice warm spot for the dough to rise. Start checking the dough to see how much it's risen after 20-25 minutes. It may only take 30-minutes to double. -Grainlady

1. Freezing keeps yeast the longest, refrigeration the next longest amount of time. 2. A refrigerator is actually a very dry environment. Many powdered foods will keep free-flowing when kept in a refrigerator, rather than on a pantry shelf, due to the constant dry condition of the refrigerator or freezer (it's the frost-free function that keeps it dry). Leaving a jar of yeast open in a hot, humid kitchen will actually start activating the surface yeast, so measure the amount you need and close the jar and put it back into the refrigerator or freezer. The enemies of yeast are heat, humidity, and light. Like some of the others, I vacuum-seal the 1# bags in a FoodSaver bag and keep it in the freezer. I keep a user-friendly amount in an old brown glass jar (originally had yeast in it) in the refrigerator. 3. As others mentioned, do a test to see if it's still active. YEAST TEST: Use a 1 c. glass measuring cup. Fill it to the 1/4 c. line with warm water and add 1 t. sugar. Then add 1-1/2 t. yeast and wait 10 minutes. It should be up to the 1/2 c. line if the yeast is still active. 4. Your bread forming a crack on the top is usually from excessive flour, as you suspected. The amount of flour in the recipe is just a good guess - add the flour slowly to the liquid ingredients until it's the right texture (feel) without regard to the amount called for in the recipe - it may take more and it may take less flour than the recipe calls for. The amount of the liquid should remain the same, the flour is the item that varies. Flour varies in protein level from brand to brand and bag to bag. The protein (gluten) amount and how much moisture is already in the flour from storage is what determins how much flour is needed - you shouldn't need to alter the liquid. The higher the protein/gluten of the flour, the more liquid it soaks up. So if your recipe calls for all-purpose flour (or the author of the recipe used all-purpose flour) and you have used bread flour, you will throw off the hydration if you use the amount of flour called for in the recipe because of the extra gluten in bread flour. 5. Whole flax seeds are essentially a laxative. Only when the seeds are ground/milled into a flour can you get all the goodness from them. A few whole seeds are okay for decoration, but you'll get more nutrition from them if they are ground. -Grainlady

The great thing about all purpose flour is that you can use it for all purposes. There are a few different kinds of wheat that are our main supply. Other forms are usually given a separate name, such as einkorn, spelt, emmer, farro (which can actually be three different ones, but is usually used for the one with the biggest berry). For the full explanation of the wheat varieties, search on Grainlady and read her posts. Basically, however, there are some that have 12-14% protein, from which gluten is developed, 8-10%, and 6%-ish. AP flour is a blend of high and low protein flours to make one that's around 10.5%, with some variation by company. KA AP is higher in protein than most other APs and very appropriate for many breads, but not so great for cake. Some bread flour is very high protein, and most is a percent or two more than the AP from the same company. Cake flour is usually about 8% protein and pastry flour is 6%. You don't want to develop gluten for cakes and pastries! That's why you're warned not to overbeat them. You can't tell the protein content based on the nutrition label. It gets lost in the rounding error. KA and some others label their bags with the actual protein content. So, the point of bread flour is that the higher protein content develops more gluten, making for a stronger rise. That's not necessarily a higher rise. For that, they often put malted barley in the flour, more often AP, because it's already a blend, as well as enriched (vitamins and minerals) if it's bleached. The stronger gluten will show in the crumb structure and texture. Bread is whatever you want it to be. If you're making bread you like with the flour you have, then it's good! If someone else prefers another, that's good too. Some people prefer a stronger cake from AP, some like a flyaway light cake crumb from cake flour. Some people mix their own to get it just right. Unless you're in a competition with a particular standard sheet that it's being judged to, none of this matters so long as you and those you're feeding like what you're making, so don't let it get to you.