1. Flour. Flour everywhere.

Flour is a monstrous white powder that flies up in an instance, coating everything around it in a ghostly glow; at least it keeps sticky dough from becoming affixed to your hands.

2. Why don't you bake sourdough?

A lot of home bakers don't bake sourdough because of the needy elixir known as a "Mother starter." The Mother is a soup of wild yeast that is fed by adding juice now and then, with a little flour and has to be supplemented every time it has been used.

3. Does this recipe make one loaf or five?

Sometimes the recipe you come across on the internet is a commercial recipe and makes enough bread to feed five thousand people. Sometimes it's easy to tell (i.e. use one pound of flour), and sometimes it isn't.

4. Why don't you bake croissants?

Ever wonder how croissants are so fluffy and flaky? It's because the butter is folded in (by hand, for domestic bakers) numerous times, until there are hundreds of layers. All of this has to be done quick enough, else the butter melts and you get a fancy biscuit instead. It's labor intensive and time sensitive, a combination that is difficult to master, and intimidating to even try (but rewarding in the end.)

5. Nobody opens any doors in the kitchen, or so help me–

Most of the time, bread dough rises faster at higher temperatures, and the dough may need humidity to keep it moist and fluffy. The opening of a door allows the perfect air to escape, costing more time and possibly ruining an entire batch of loaves.

6. No, do not poke cling wrap covering the bowl, I know it looks like it's overflowing

Resting dough overnight in a refrigerator allows it to gain its air pockets and crumb, and it swells, sometimes to five times its original size. The dough is covered with cling wrap to prevent it from developing a crust, and handling it too much pushes the gas from the bread, making it hard. And nobody wants hard bread.

7. The bowl is overflowing.

The largest bowl most kitchen sections have is one and a half gallons , which often isn't enough for one recipe's worth of dough. It can be hard to predict how much the dough will swell overnight, so the bowl overflows sometimes.

8. No, you cannot eat the bread as it comes out of the oven.

It's 450° F, have some self-preservation.

9. Cookies are basically bread, right?

No. Though uncooked cookie substance is called dough, it is very different from bread dough. Cookies have many similarities to bread, such as containing mostly sugar and carbs, and being heated in an oven until a chemical change occurs, but just because someone is a baker, does not mean they bake cakes or cookies, or even every kind of bread.

10. Why bake bread when you can buy it?

You've never had fresh bread before, have you? It's glorious.

11. Why buy bread when you can bake it?

It's hard work, and sometimes it's more practical to buy half a dozen bagels for $4, than it is to spend and hour and a half trying to get the dough to pass the float test.

Time is money, but sometimes good bread is worth all the time in the world.