French Bread Baking

I made Mireille Guilian?s French Baguettes (a previous post).  I?ve never baked from scratch. Every cake, cookie, brownie or muffin I?ve ever made has come in a cardboard box.  So this was my first bread making experience. The first ingredient I opened was the active dry yeast and I was not ready for the pungent smell that it had.  I was just hoping that the smell would not linger on my baguettes.  The process of mixing was attempted by my hand mixer.  The dough was becoming thick and the harder the mixer worked the harder the dough fought back, then the mixer popped like a light bulb and stopped working.  Next step, kneading.  Kneading is not as easy as it seems on cooking shows.  I wanted to take pictures of the process. Yeah Right!  It was so sticky I couldn?t get it off my fingers and I was becoming frustrated.  So, after kneading, the directions said to let it sit for an hour but for some reason I read, ?refrigerate? for an hour. Needless to say the dough rising process never happened but I tried to shape the dough into breads anyway.  I ended up making 4 different sized baguettes that looked more like calzones.

Today, I?m giving this bread baking thing a second try.