Tackling yeast

I have this thing against yeast.  I think it goes back to my childhood, when I would bake with my mom using yeast and we would have to "wake up" the yeast by singing, etc. to them.  This was, apparently, a fairly scarring experience.  At least scarring enough to make me never want to use yeast in my adult life.  However, I was willing to risk my sanity and face my fears to make these delicious garlic knots.  I compared this recipe to a few others on the web, and really the only difference I could find was that this recipe made fewer knots.  I doubled the recipe, so it should have made about 24 knots, but somehow I still ended up with only about 12. This is probably due to issues with getting the dough to rise (*shakes fist at yeast*).

The dough could have been a little fluffier, but again I think this goes back to the problem of getting it to rise more before baking.  I don't know if I can really blame this on the yeast, or if it's my fault for only waiting an hour before baking it.  Next time I'm hoping to magically figure something out so that the dough will be a little lighter.  But besides the minor issues with the dough (and it still was alright), the garlic knots were pretty darn delicious.  I did a mixture of butter (well, Smart Balance) and olive oil, mixed with about 5 cloves of garlic and some salt, which was a slight variation on the original.  I followed the directions about spreading some of this mixture on the dough, then baking it, then dipping it in the mixture again when it came out of the oven.  Some friends were wary of the rolls being dipped in the raw garlic mixture, but everyone liked them once all was said and done.  I also didn't use any chopped parsley, because I think it tastes like grass and doesn't really add anything to the flavor.  Maybe next time I'll add in a bit of fresh basil, if I have it, because garlic and basil go together perfectly. 

Overall rating: definitely a success, and definitely making these again.