I have read a few of Recipes but I failed to get the times lines and proportions of preparation or I could not read it well. Here are my doubts.
For a Ideal bread making (In general)
Your expert opinion will help me understand and read the Recipes better. Thanks a lot.
Keeping "active yeast + sugar solution aside" is for the purpose proofing the yeast: that is, determining that it is still alive, active, and is going to give a good result for your bread.
If you don't see significant activity (foam or bubbling) in 5 minutes, 10 at the very outside, then the yeast is no good. Otherwise, you can use it as soon as you see the foam.
The second question about rising times is not answerable in the general case.
It really depends on the bread you are making, and the method you are using. The answer could range from as short as 15 to 30 minutes for a fast bread or pizza dough, to several days for certain artisan style or no knead recipes.
The right time can be anywhere from a few minutes to two days. It depends on the technique you are using.
Most home recipes work well when you leave the sponge (= yeast + water + nutrients mix) sit around until you see the yeast blooming on the surface, maybe 10 minutes with warm water. The proofing (= letting the dough sit between kneading and baking) normally goes until the dough has doubled in volume. The time needed for doubling varies depending on the amount of yeast used and the room temperature, so nobody measures it by time.
When you move on to more advanced recipes, you will have to accomodate several stages of proofing, and techniques such as retarding the dough in a fridge. They make this much more complicated. For this, find a good resource which explains them, they are too much for this post. But for now, if you are going with a single rising stage, the above rules of thumb tend to work well.
I don't know about proofing the yeast since I bake bread using sourdough only, but I can tell you a thing or two about letting bread dough rise:
The most important rule: The dough dictates the amount of time you let it rise, not the clock. The time a dough needs to rise is heavily dependent on temperature, amount of yeast, salt water and fat (if any) in the dough.
As a general rule: When the volume of the dough has increased by 75 - 100%, you can put it in the oven.
For wheat dough, you can check if the dough is ready to bake by slightly pushing a dent into the dough using yoir finger. If the dent you made recovers but does not completely come back, it is ready to bake.
