The Bread Quest - First Attempt

Ideally, we would like to start making our own bread for a variety of reasons:

•  One is that the bread that we buy at the store is not entirely to our satisfaction anyway. I am from Italy and I miss the crusty bread that lasts fresh and tasty for more than one day that I ate everyday at home, and I don't even consider "toast" bread a real bread to be eaten with a meal. 
• I also noticed that in the bread I buy at the store, even the fresh one from the bakery, there are a bunch of ingredients that I don't recognize as "natural" . 
• By making our own bread  we could use organic ingredients, since there are no organic breads in the stores near our home.
• My husband loves making bread and there is nothing better than the smell of freshly baked bread in the house. 

4 grains plus flax roll

A couple of days ago my husband tried  making a white French bread. It looked perfect and it was pretty good although it was a lot heavier and more solid than we would have liked. Besides I would like to eat whole grain, since it's so much healthier and the higher amount of fiber help me with my diet. So yesterday I tried to make a 4 grains and flax bread, following the recipe indicated by Arrowhead mills, the makers of the 4 grains mix. It did not turn out too good. I made 8 small bread rolls shaped like mini-baguettes. First of all it took much longer to cook them than indicated in the box. Secondly they are way too solid and dry so they were a big disappointment. I am starting to think a breadmaker would probably solve our problem, also because it seems to take so long and so much effort to make the bread from scratch that it doesn't seem feasible,especially with a baby in the house.