Keep failing at making bread?

Bread should be yeasty. Yeast, flour, water, salt, and honey make a great basic baguette. Bread flour makes a difference. If you have a hand mixer or stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, that really helps. I knead with a dough hook for a good 6-10 mins. I tend to over proof it (stronger taste). 90-120 mins first rise. 45-60 mins second rise, after it's shaped. Baking depends on what kind of bread you're making. If you want baguettes, high temperature and a steamy oven (fill a cast iron skillet with cold water on the bottom rack, bread bakes top rack) are essential.

I use this technique/recipe (plus 1 tbsp honey):

http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/homemade-mini-baguettes.aspx
http://www.finecooking.com/videos/how-to-shape-baguettes.aspx

Did you pre-heat your oven? Then make 100% certain the temperature is EXACT.
Just 5 to 10 degrees off can change everything.. Also tv or mags recipes are not perfect and frequently have serious errors.

Bread dough, especially the one you make with yeast, has to rest over night at room temperature. You can do everything with bread once it's ready, deepfreeze it or do what you like, but making bread needs patience and time.

Buy a bread-making machine and follow instructions that come with it EXACTLY. Those machines are not terribly expensive.

Italian and French baguettes are hard to make. Passable bread can be made in a breadmaker - especially if you use the "dough" cycle and then put the dough in a pan or make rolls. I made pretty good baguettes once but I blew out the light bulb in the oven when I was spraying water on the interior of the oven, as directed.

Not really. Baking is something of an art, and it takes time to develop an eye and a feel for the dough to know what it needs. If you haven't already, though, I'd suggest you get away from using volumetric measures (cups, tablespoons) and switch to weights instead. The weight of flour versus volume varies widely depending on the flour's texture, humidity, how packed it is, etc. but its mass will always be constant. Switching to baking by weight will give you more control and more predictable results. And then go buy "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" and the King Arthur Flour Cookbook.