I’ve discovered a new hobby. I started baking bread a few weekends ago and found that I really like doing it. I think it stems from an experience I had a few years ago. I wanted pancakes but we didn’t have any mix so I looked up a recipe and I was shocked—shocked I say—at how simple it was. Before that moment I’d never given a thought to what was actually in pancake mix. Since then I’ve always made pancakes from scratch. I usually make a small batch just for Sunday breakfast but sometimes I’ll make a lot and freeze them and we’ll have pancakes all week.

Home-made tortillas are almost as easy except for the rolling process. Maybe one of these days I’ll pick up a tortilla press. Until then I don’t make tortillas all that often.

So I started baking bread on the weekend. I’ve only made about a half-dozen loaves. I write software for a living so it’s nice to make something real once in a while. I think cooking is easy for a programmer to get his head around and do well. Recipes are like little computer programs that make food and baking is basically just chemistry.

But I am having some trouble and I hope someone out there with more experience can help me. I’ve been making simple white bread and wheat bread and I’m relatively satisfied with the flavor of the loaves except for one thing: they’re not rising as much as I’d like. I’m cooking in bread pans but they’re just not making the nice tall loaves I’d like. The bread never rises above the top edge of the pans. I don’t know if it’s a failing in my process, the recipe, or something else. Maybe they’re supposed to be that way. Maybe the pans are too big. My white bread rises slightly better than my wheat bread. I’m using a simple recipe (flour, water, sugar, salt, active dry yeast). I’m blooming the yeast. I’m kneading for 10 minutes and letting it rise for an hour before dividing into two loaves.

The result is always a flattish, dense loaf where I’d prefer a tallish, lighter loaf. At this point I suspect the flour since my white bread works better than the wheat. For this weekend’s experimentation I think I’m going to replace the all-purpose flour I normally use with bread flour.

Do you make bread? Have any tips for a beginner? Here’s a confidence boosting tip from me: for your first bread make cornbread. It’s super fast, very easy (you can do it all in one bowl), and as long as you don’t burn it it’ll taste great.