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My best cooking tip for new cooks: watch the original Cooks Country/America's Test Kitchen on PBS (or your local library), and Alton Brown's Good Eats. Both cover the how's and why's of cooking with clear, understandable presentations. Alton has a flair for silliness - such as the yeast sock puppets - but even now 20 years on, they're what I think of when yeast is mentioned.

Also, the Americas Test Kitchen cookbook is about $20, and you can usually find it online or used bookstores for less. Just like the show, they explain how and why a recipe works.