Bread Baking

I'm a good cook and an excellent baker. But I have a weakness. I'm scared of yeast. Any recipe that calls for yeast I skip. It has to do with my Mom baking bread when I was a kid. You had to be quite, you couldn't walk through the house. The house would be to cold and it wouldn't rise or my parents would turn the stove on and the dough would explode.

But I love yeast bread and especially yeast rolls. So I have decided to conquer my fear of yeast. Today I tried a simple bread recipe. I am very exited to say it did rise. Half the recipe I made into rolls. (It was actually a roll recipe.) The rest I turned into two small loaves. The rolls are a little dry and thick and a tad too crusty. My husband is stuffing them in his face fast enough and says they're good. The loafs were excellent. Not dry at all. What were people thinking when they switched from the wonderful texture and full flavor of homemade bread to the packaged white bread we use today?