Yeast scares me. It intimidates me with its bubbling and kneading and rising. So far, I have only tackled a couple yeast recipes – pizza crust and an easy focaccia. Recently, I wanted something to add to a pasta dinner and decided to be brave and try a French bread recipe that my mom made a lot, from the More-with-Less cookbook.
I’m not writing this as a bread tutorial, just to share some pictures of Hannah and I tackling the project together. She was a very willing helper and wanted to carry around her piece of dough for the whole day.
Kneading
Rolling
Silly face
Sorry I didn’t get any of the finished product, but it was good! The recipe makes a lot, so I got several meals out of it. We ate it in nice warm slices, then I made garlic toast, then I made french toast, then I made French bread pizza. Quite a bit of work and time (in my opinion), but lots of payoff!
grit & grace 
And what have I been doing today, but baking cinnamon rolls here in Boston. Evan was intrigued by the ingredients, the kneading, the rising, my pickiness about the temperature of things, and the shaping and construction of the actual rolls.
An amazing process, and the results are delectable.
Joel inherited his grandma’s bread machine, and I love to use it for making dough. I’m not as big a fan of its baking, since it makes vertical loaves, but I like that I just throw the ingredients in and let it do the work for me. Then I use the dough for pizza crust, dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, etc. My mom and my sister both use their kitchen aid mixers with the dough hooks to do all the kneading :) I actually have some pizza dough in the freezer that I should thaw and use some day…