Disasters in Bread Baking

I don't know what is wrong with me. I've baked bread before, and it has turned out perfectly lovely. I want to start baking bread for sandwiches instead of buying it. It's cheaper and I stay home, so I have the time. But something is wrong with me. I bought new yeast, and it foams up nicely, but somewhere between the mixing and the rising, everything seems to be falling apart. The bread is not rising high enough, for starters. First rising (in the bowl) seems to go fine. I let it rise in the oven, since my house is much too cold. The second rising is where things go crazy. I don't know if my loaf pan is too big or what, but I can't seem to get a nice sandwich-sized loaf.

Just pulled the English Muffin Bread out of the oven. It's pretty good, but at only 2 inches high, it's not going to make much of a sandwich. The color on the outside is nice, but the inside is just shy of being under-cooked. Whatever. It'll be fine with the soup.

The first batch that I did this morning- for which I used the loaf pan I was SUPPOSED to use, was also a failure. Again, did not rise adequately the second time around. Frustration. The resulting loaf was pretty much a useless brick. A tiny, useless brick. I let it rise as long as I was supposed to, but it just didn't turn out right. Argh!

I'm going to try the "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" approach. Seems pretty easy. They have a whole-wheat sandwich bread recipe, so let's just see what happens. I tried the basic recipe once, a long time ago. I can't remember if I had any success with it or not. I know that I only made one loaf. The rest of it got pushed into the back of my fridge and froze. When I finally dug it back out, it had turned into something... else. I'm going to keep at this, dammit. I want fresh-baked bread!