[Bhc]

I want to love the yeast, I really do. I respect it. I love it. I tell it how wonderful it is and how much I appreciate it. (I treat it like a snobby cat, for heaven's sake!) I can never get it to do what it is supposed to do.

My kitchen isn't particularly cold, drafty or antiseptic. My yeast is new, I follow the temps to the letter, I buy the "good" flour, I do everything save make it dinner and take it to bed. Of note, everything else I bake is **fabulous** (other people's words, not mine).

I get SOME results, but it's always as if the yeast had another more important thing to do and just phoned in the effort.

Any suggestions for someone who desperately wants to have success but so far has not been able to achieve it?

[Gale Gand]

Hmmmmm, that doesn't make sense. You obviously are a decent baker...but it makes me think of one time when I was judging the Whirlpool Unique Cake Contest (I think the show of it still airs on Food Network occasionally) and a contestant's yeast just wasn't waking up. At home it did no problem but when it had cameras on it, it got shy. So I just jolted it's reproduction by cheating in a little sugar to get things going. It worked fine. Maybe try over feeding it a little bit at the beginning to get things going. Add 1 tablespoon of sugar to the yeast and warm water I assume you are proofing it in and then let me know what happens. And maybe it's not you, but maybe it's just your recipe?