Bread gone bad!

Hello all!  This is my first post about baking.  Hope you enjoy it!

This is me and my girlfriend...

I'm going to be blogging about my escapades into the world of baking.  I've baked in a very amateur and slapdash way for quite a long time now, but I really want to get good at it.  If you're interested, you can keep up with my blog, laugh at my horrendous mistakes, and maybe even learn a thing or two as I learn it myself.

For the record, I'm not going to post recipes that have come out of books - you'll have to buy the books!

Tonight, I was trying the white bread recipe in the "Fabulous Baker Brothers" book.  I bought it at the Cake and Bake Show me and my girlfriend (who bakes much better than me!) went to, after seeing Tom Herbert off the TV demonstrate how to make soda bread.

Tom's advice (in person and in the book) was the following:
- Find a good quality flour, and stick to it.  Different flours apparently behave completely differently, so I bought myself a bag of Allinson strong white flour as you can buy it in any supermarket.
- Use dried yeast, but not the fast action stuff designed for breadmakers.  Fast action yeast is apparently "wild and unpredictable", and as I've had trouble getting my rises consistent in the past, I thought I'd try changing to the non-fast kind of dried yeast.

After searching 4 supermarkets (!) I finally found some simple dried yeast without the emulsifiers and all the other rubbish in.  This was also Allinson, and it looks like this.

I was so excited after I bought this, and couldn't wait to get baking.  However, unfamiliar yeast, unfamiliar flour, and a new recipe... a recipe for disaster!

Firstly, I don't think I got the amount of yeast right.  I didn't weigh it - I used a level teaspoon on the basis that this was probably 5g!  The packet said a level tablespoon was 15g, so I thought it was a fair assumption.  However, the rise was SO SLOW!  After an hour on it's first rise, it was nothing like double the size, and on the second, it didn't seem to do anything.  My guess - I didn't have a full 5g.

Secondly, I reckon I had the oven way too hot.  After 15 minutes in the oven, the top was burnt and and the bottom was soggy.  So what came out of the oven was just a burnt brick.  However, there's some small consolation in the fact that the chewy dough in the middle of the burnt brick does actually taste quite nice - so at least I got the amount of salt about right!  I might stick a couple of extra grams in next time to see what it tastes like, but I think it's about there.

So there it is - bread gone bad!  I'd have posted a picture of the result, but it's just too embarrassing!  Maybe next time I have such a complete disaster, you'll see it!

Until next time,

Bob x