mom, help. I've been making bread recently with your recipe, and I gotta say it's great and easy, but the whole wheat flour I was given keeps making the bread really dense. I can still eat them but is there any way to get the whole wheat as fluffy as the unbleached white you use in your recipe?
Because of the structure of whole wheat bread, it’s automatically going to be a denser bread. Healthier perhaps, but whole wheat doesn’t have the same gluten springyness of white flour, so it’s always going to be a little more dense than the white flour version.
If however it’s like trying to sink your teeth into a brick, it could be one of several things. Is it moist enough? Whole wheat tends to just sop up all the moisture and you’re left with a very dry dense dough that struggles to rise.
If it is moist enough, what’s the temperature like in your kitchen, do you have AC running in the house? AC is the death of all bread rising unless you have a temperature controlled room in your house. When I’m making bread and it’s struggling to bomf I tend to throw it somewhere warm for the first proof. Like the linen closet or one memorable time during the winter when my heat went out, on top of the tumble dryer. You might also be under salting it, if you are needing to add more water to make the dough pliant. So maybe try another 1/4 tsp more salt.
How hard are you kneading it? Are you getting a good stretch or are you just met with immediate resistance? Also what type of grains are in it, is it just whole wheat or is it a blend? Some of the flours I am noticing at the store at the moment are heavy on rye, and rye has even less of the necessary proteins that enable gluten to develop and let the bread bomf.
As a last resort you can also try adding just a little bit of white flour to give it more structural integrity. White flour is specifically made to be a high gluten developing flour, which is why it’s so popular to make fluffy loafs of bread with. I think my ratio is normally to sub out the half cup at the end for white flour, but you might want to play around with it to see what works best for you :)
