making bread

I am not a baker. Let's just open this up honestly. My Mom and Sister can attest to that. While I may be able (finally) to whip up a pretty good meal, baking is where I severely lack know how. I read a cook book and the directions make sense. If they don't make sense then I wing it and it usually comes out pretty darn good. A recipe on baking however reads like something in my sisters insane "bio-something-or-other" text books. The funny thing is though in baking, you just can't "wing-it". Things don't come out quite the same if you don't knead the full "20" times, or if you add just a pinch more or less of this or that. However, the other day, was truly a miracle. It took an ice storm penning me up in the house for days and a little bit of begging from my kids, but I did it. I Baked. I Baked lots actually. And they didn't turn out half bad :) Well to be honest the bread was a little on the heavy "dough-y" side, but there were yummy. I wont even attempt to explain how bad the molasses bread turned out, so lets not even go there(I will just say I added a little more or less of this or that). But at least we had fresh baked warm bread and I received bookoo amounts of "mommy brownie points" from the kiddos.