I am a very good cook (not bragging, it's just a well-known fact in my circle) but as much as I hate to admit it--I do make mistakes from time to time.

It's nothing to hang your head in shame about or rant and rave and tear your apron to shreds over. It happens to the greatest of cooks once in a while--things just go wonky sometimes!

But I really hate it when I've spent so much time mixing, shaping and baking bread and something goes wrong. Usually it's stupid things that happen!

So, in the hopes of helping you avoid making these same whoopsies, I put together a list of 6 of the most common things that can go wrong when making bread and how to avoid them.

After checking with fellow bread bakers, I've found the most common mistake of all is to forget to add the salt to the dough.

Salt regulates the yeast's activity or ability to make the bread rise. DO NOT EVER LEAVE IT OUT!! This will result in a very bland, tasteless, don't-really-want-to-eat-it-bread plus it also effects the rising of the dough.

Salt added directly to the yeast will kill it. Mix the salt in with the third cup of flour to avoid this potential problem.

Now, how to correct this mistake? There are a couple of ways--

1. Slap a post-it note reminding you to add the salt to the top of the box of salt and place the box in full sight next to your mixer.
2. High-lite the salt measurement on the recipe page or card or add a noticeable sticker of some kind next to the ingredient.

If you're a beginner at breadmaking this is a very easy mistake to make. Unfortunately, this mistake will kill your yeast and the bread will never rise.

To correct this mistake, I strongly suggest you purchase a cooking or candy thermometer to measure the temperature of the water.

Another theory is to drip a drop or two of the warm water on your wrist. It should be the temperature of baby formula--barely warm--110° to 115°F.

Those big holes in the finished loaf are called air pockets. It usually happens when the dough hasn't been kneaded enough or correctly.

The best solution for this is to pinch any bubbles whenever you see them in your bread dough, before you bake it. This will deflate the bubble and prevent a hole when the loaf is baked.

This is actually the second most common mistake I've found among breadmakers.

It usually happens when we've forgotten all about the bread dough rising in the kitchen and gotten busy with something else like our families, chores, phone calls or, ahem, being on the computer.

When the dough is allowed to over-rise it can fall, leaving you with a dense and sour tasting bread. Probably not what you were aiming for.

There are a couple of things you can do at this point.

1. Gently knead it again, let it rise again and go on from there. It's just a wait and see thing when you bake the bread. If it's really over-risen it will collapse during baking and there's nothing else to do. The dough just couldn't be saved.
2. If the dough is in the second rise in the loaf pans and over-flows the pans, use a pair of lightly greased kitchen shears to cut the excess dough from off the sides of the loaves. Roll the excess dough into small balls and allow to rise 20 to 30 minutes on a greased cookie sheet or in a greased muffin pan and bake at 350°F for 15-20 minutes.

Also, allow the bread loaves to to rise for about 15 to 20 minutes more before baking if the top is flat.

The best solution to this problem is to get a kitchen timer and carry it with you to remind you when time is up and the dough needs checked on. If you don't want to do this, then set your alarm clock to notify you of the elasped time.

If you've tried a new recipe and found that it's more than you can use OR something happens and you can't finish your baking right now, what can you do? You hate the thought of throwing all that dough away, right?

Well, it's perfectly safe to refrigerate the unused dough for a few days and then get it out when you've got the time. Put the bowl with the dough into a large ziploc bag or place plastic wrap over the bowl and store it in the fridge.

When you're ready, transfer the dough to a warm bowl and let it warm slowly to continue risingaccording to where you left off with the recipe and bake. It will take a little longer to rise because the dough has to throughly warm up but the warm bowl helps..

It happens sometimes! And nothing tastes worse than burnt bread! There is usually no way to salvage this problem other than to learn to avoid ever making this mistake again.

Make sure to follow the baking time and temperature carefully. Check your oven to make sure it's the right temperature given in the recipe. An oven thermometer is great for this and it's low cost.

Use that timer or alarm to remind you when it's time to get your bread out of the oven. If the recipe calls for starting off at a high temp and then turning the heat down after a few minutes, this is where you will definitely need that timer.

REMIND YOU OF A MOMENT IN YOUR PAST?