Re: Other Pie & Cake outlets are available. !!!
To follow on from Paul Hollywood, he did a book that's just called 'Bread'. I've no idea if it's better than other bread books, but it was £5 when I picked it up, and it has various different kinds of bread, how to make them and how the baking actually works. Which then means you have an understanding of the baking process, and so can experiment with knowledge. It was an excellent investment of £5.
Get yourself a baker's scraper, if you're going to hand make bread. It's basically just a tall bit of unsharpened metal with handle (or the top bent over to make one) but helps quite a lot.
But if you don't fancy starting by making it, I also use a bread maker. If you keep all the stuff in a corner of the kitchen, ready to hand, you can have a loaf on the go in 5 minutes - then 2-4 hours later the machine goes ping. Hey presto!
If I want to experiement, I'll probably work it by hand - as you can feel if you've made a dough too wet, or say put too much cheese in it so it won't bake properly. At which point you just add more of the other ingredients in proportion until you've corrected your error.
A baking tray of water on the bottom of the oven gives you crustier crusts. Yum. Fresh bread and butter is the way to lunch on a weekend.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
