Be The Bread Winner!

Dr. Myles H. Bader is a preventive care specialist whose "10,0001 Food Facts, Chef's Secrets & Household Hints" was published in 1998. He tackles making bread in the first chapter.

Crusts too hard? Put a little metal container of water in the oven while the bread bakes.

The secret to a softer crust is to open the oven door and throw in a few ice cubes halfway through the baking time. The dense steam will provide just enough moisture to keep the crust from becoming hard. It also allows the bread to rise more easily for a nice, firm, chewy inside of the loaf.

Knead dough on a wooden board. Plastic boards don't have the tacky surface or "grabbing quality" that wood does.

Whole wheat bread quick rise -- add a tablespoon of lemon juice to the dough as you're mixing it.

To speed up the rising time for bread dough, put the pan with the dough on top of a heating pad and set it on "Medium."

Conversely, on very hot or humid days, the dough rises too quickly and becomes very hard to knead.

As a substitute for yeast, you can use one teaspoon of baking soda mixed with one teaspoon of powdered vitamin C. Ascorbic acid is just acidic enough to make the reaction work.

Always add the yeast to the water; never just dump the water on the yeast. The weight will kill it.

So -- may your dough always rise and may you always have dough enough to make dough!