Help me get my Whole Wheat bread to rise

[MyLittleWarrior]

I used to be so good at baking (white) bread. I've been baking all of my familys bread for over a year now, and love it. However, I've only been TF for a few months (still making the transition, but doing very well as budget will allow) and I've started experimenting with whole wheat. I have a grain mill, and I'm grinding my own flour. But every time, I get a very flat loaf of bread. I used to have a killer sour dough recipe with a starter I made from commercial yeast, but when I tried whole wheat sour dough with a wild starter, it barely rose at all, and was way way to sour. So I ditched the sour dough effort for now and am trying to get any ww recipe to rise. I've tried adding vital wheat gluten, longer rising times (it gets all crusty on top, and then falls in the oven), and I just made the no-kneed recipe, and it's very tasty, but very flat. What am I doing wrong? It's so frustrating to go from such great white bread results to flop after flop with my wheat breads. Can anyone help?

[wakkun]

I am certainly no expert on baking bread, but I have made bread with whole wheat flour too. Do you knead the dough yourself or use bread machine. I have been making bread mostly by kneading myself. If so, are you overworking your dough too much? I have noticed when I made bread with ww that the dough was denser and harder to knead and I tended to try to work the dough more and that's when the bread came out a bit flat and did not rise as much. Also, I have waited for 20 minutes or so, after mixing all ingredients and waited before kneading and it helps too.

Good luck.

[dogmom327]

What type of wheat berries are you using? I've had good luck using half hard red berries and half hard white. The red berries have the most protein and are therefore better for the rising part (I think) but I can get away with half white berries and they make the bread a little more tender. My bread rises like crazy even when I don't add the extra gluten. As a disclaimer, I do use yeast. I need to get switched over to sourdough.

[425lisamarie]

Well, this is something you would have to independently decide, but as "TF" as I have ever been, I *still* compromised a bit on bread. It just didn't work for me, and my kids are MUCH happier and will eat a sandwich/dip in soup, etc etc if I make a good bread that they love too. The 100% whole wheat "wild" sourdough just didn't do the job LOL.

I have a really really good starter, not from regular jarred commercial yeast, and I use that. I use about 1/4 white flour in my recipes.

Not the sort of incredible help you want, but we don't live on bread, it's more of a carrier for other healthy things so I don't sweat about it.

BTW I grind my grains too, and I use the hard white wheat, sometimes half hard red