Yeast is your friend.

This is a short post. I am writing to all of you who have never baked with yeast out of fear. Yeast is not hard, or scary, in fact its your friend. There is nothing better than the smell of rising dough, or baking bread. Once you have mastered these tiny organisms, you have legions of tiny minions, waiting to do your bidding, that is assuming that your bidding involves dough or fermenting beer.

There are two kinds of dry yeast, regular and rapid rise. Rapid rise takes half the time of regular yeast, and its the only kind I use. So, you have your tiny packet of yeast, and you aren't sure it its alive? Take the amount of yeast and the amount of water you need for your recipe, and mix them together, preferably with whatever sugar product you are using in the recipe. In a few minutes your mix should have developed a nice, foamy head. It will also smell yeasty. You'll know it when you smell it. So, you are waiting and waiting and nothing happened? You probably killed it. Maybe its old. Here are a few ruled of thumb to prevent yeast genocide;
1. Check the date! Yes it has an expiration date for a reason!
2. If you have a jar of yeast, or a previously opened package it needs to be refrigerated. Unopened = cupboard, opened = fridge. easy.
3. Water temperature. If you put the little guys in water a lot hotter then 110 degrees Fahrenheit, they are dead. When checking the water, it should be just slightly warmer than body temperature.

So, now you have a nice bowl of foamy yeast, water, and some kind of sweetener. Mix it with the rest of the ingredients and there you have it, dough that will rise.

Now there are a lot of things that I could say about yeast, but this is the basic stuff that will allow you to make a fair number of baked goods. The proofing method listed works with active dry and rapid rise yeast.