A trick to make your bread dough rise faster

There are a couple of ways to make sure your bread dough rises in a timely fashion. Warmth is the key; you can set the bowl on the counter above a running dishwasher, set the bowl on top of a recently-used stove burner, set it inside a recently-warmed (and turned off) oven. Of course, using a burner or the oven is tricky. You want just enough warmth to jump-start the rising process, not enough to start cooking the dough. I've accidentally cooked the dough before.

The best way to gently warm rising dough is to wrap a microwaveable muscle wrap around the bowl.

My mom calls these things "Maggies." I'm not sure why. You can make your own homemade version by filling a long (clean) tube sock with uncooked rice and tying off the end. Then you have a muscle wrap that can be either microwaved or frozen and wrapped around any sore part of your body, and reused over and over and over.

For this, microwave it about two minutes, wrap it around the base of the bowl, and cover the whole works with a towel. Your bread will rise much faster, and higher.