Cooking Catastrophies

As I was conversing via email with one of my friends from a neighboring town, we were discussing various baked items that use yeast. It got me telling her about my single attempt at making homemade bread oh maybe 26 years ago. Then I told her about the one and only time I tried to make homemade noodles and what happened to them. That got me thinking about adding some topics about my various cooking catastrophies (typing that word is a catastrophy). That is something I would like to explore here in the next few days or so. But I suppose you now are curious about the bread and noodles? Well, the bread was supposed to be whole wheat. I followed the recipe the best I knew how. The dough rose the way it was supposed to. But when the bread was finished, even though it tasted okay, the texture was not good...it was the heaviest loaf of bread I had ever seen. In fact, I had visions of Ellie May Clampett and her dinner rolls that were like rocks. My bread reminded me of a brick. And the noodles, well, I spent the day mixing and making these noodles according to the recipe I had at that time. Yes they were egg noodles. I rolled them out, cut them, left them to dry and did my best to keep the flies off of them while they dried. Later in the evening I got the chicken and broth ready. I was so proud of my noodles. They looked fine. But when I dropped them into the broth--there was not a noodle to be found. They completely disintegrated right there in the pot. I haven't tried to make either bread or noodles since. Homemade bread for me comes from the store freezer section in a bag of frozen bread dough. Noodles come from the store also. However, I have been getting the idea to try noodles again maybe this spring or summer. I have watched them made first hand by experts during a cooking activity at my last Activity Director job. Theirs turned out great so if I follow what they did.....it just might work. Whatdaya think?