Instructions: For the French, making bread is nothing short of a love affair - and so much like making love.

Caress the dough, love it, baby it. Give it a pat. Whisper sweet nothings to it ...
But for the rest of us - even the most prolific cookie or cake creator - bread-making seems daunting. Its so much easier to buy a gorgeous, golden loaf for a few dollars than to spend a few hours in the kitchen, right? Wrong.

Beautiful homemade bread is within reach of even a novice baker. All thats needed are simple tools, patience and a little precision.

There is no better time to master the art of bread-making than now, when the smell of fresh bread filling the house is warm, sweet heaven.

To learn the art, we went to a master. Bread designer and baker Esther Press-McManus learned the art as a child in France and has been crafting loaves, muffins and croissants for 20 years. She makes it look easy, but swears that even the most bumbling home baker can do it.

"There is no limit to what you can do with flour and water," said Press-McManus, a slight, motherly woman with a "tres francais"

bandanna around her neck. She kissed me on both cheeks as a greeting.

"The French have a romance with bread," she said as she began to knead a
ball of raisin- and walnut-studded dough.

McManus began by explaining some basic principles important to bread-making - principles most of us probably were supposed to learn in high school physics when we were too busy passing notes.

Bread needs to ferment, hence the necessity of good bread yeast.

The longer a bread is able to rise or "proof," a fancy word for ferment, the more flavorful it is. Thats why its bad to use warm ingredients - lukewarm water, for instance - when mixing a dough. That starts the fermentation process too quickly, and the dough loses taste.

A good bread is allowed to rise twice: once after its formed, a second time after its shaped. Theres a third rising, technically, as it puffs up in the oven during baking. This means most breads take hours to make - and no, take-out
aficionados, the process cant be rushed.

In France, the baguette was created after World War I and the arrival of dry yeast. Today, the French call the baguette the "fastest" bread to make. It
clocks in at four hours.

Larger loves take five hours, and sourdough - that West Coast favorite - will kill the social life with a 48-hour prep time. Chefs suggest you calculate the time needed to make a bread before tackling such a project for a party or special occasion.

Squeamish bread bakers typically lose their nerve when its time to shape the loaves.

"When you handle the bread, it should feel like a babys bottom. Now, you need to create tension with the dough," said Press-McManus, rolling up her sleeves and pulling downward on a dough ball in the center of her hand.

But doesnt kneading dough mean slamming it on a butcher block, leaning an entire bodys worth of weight into the blob and pressing it out, maybe tossing it around a bit? In a pizzeria, yes; to create a homemade work of bakery-worthy art, no.
Making gorgeous bread doesnt mean catching air or taking out the weeks frustrations.

A rounded loaf requires slow, steady kneads and gentle, almost relaxing massages. The cylindrical baguette requires the gentle motion of the palms pushing down, then out to the left and right to elongate the ball of dough.

For novice bread-makers who dont know how to roll, shape or braid, Press-McManus suggests dividing dough batches into simple, small lumps and baking them to create an assortment of funkily shaped dinner rolls - or if burned, great doorstops.

Dough-making is the first challenge to master, she explained. Presentation comes later - and can take years to master.

Along the way, you might learn the hard way that when mixing raisins, dates, nuts or any solid ingredients into bread, never do it at the beginning of the mixing process, as it may discolor the dough.

So if you have a loaf of bread puffing up in the oven right now, take heart: As in matters of the heart, practice makes perfect.

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