Baking Bread 101

Man, these baguettes looked so promising!! I made bread for the first time yesterday and it was almost a success. The dough rose and everything looked good when I put it into the oven..... but I baked it for waaaaaaay too long. The stupid recipe didn't say anything about how long to bake it - no reference to time at all - it just said to let the internal temp of the bread get to 210 degrees. Well guess what - mine never did! After an hour and 15 minutes I took it out of the oven cause I was getting really frustrated with it. Bllah. And then I called my mom and let me know she usually cooks bread for about 15-20 minutes. Ooops! The bread was REALLY hard. Well, better luck next time I suppose! I am feeding the birds well at this point!