Perfecting the Whole Wheat Recipe, Take 2

OK, yesterday's attempt was a failure.

My first thought was that my starter wasn't active enough.  I've been feeding it on half rations for the last couple of weeks, so that I don't need to throw anything away.  After making this short brick of a loaf, I immediately fed my starter with the full treatment of 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of flour after discarding all but 4 oz. of the starter.  Six hours later, it grew just like it did in its youth.

That was just before going to bed, last night.  I think in the future, I am going to feed my starter before I prepare the sponge for my recipe, instead of feeding it while the sponge is growing.  That way, I have a lively starter to use with my recipe.  For today, the starter had been in the fridge overnight.  This morning, I took 4 oz. of the starter for my recipe, and just put the remains in the fridge without feeding it.  Next week, I'll do a feeding the night before I start my recipe.

The other change I am making is using an equal parts (by weight) of flour and water in my sponge.  I'm saving the remaining 3 oz. of water for the full recipe.  That keeps my sponge from being too limp, so I can see when it has doubled in size.  I marked the bowl for the starting point of my sponge, so I can judge its growth before continuing with the recipe.

This bowl shape makes deciding when the sponge has doubled in size a little difficult, but after 6 hours, it looks like this:

So, today's whole procedure is

	Whole Wheat
Preparation	The day before, discard all but 4 oz. of the starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of white flour.  Set in a warm place for 6-8 hours.
Sponge	Take 4 oz. of the fed starter.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for 6 hours. Place the remaining starter (unfed) in the fridge for next time.
Water	3 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼  cups
White flour	None
Salt	1 tsp
Butter	1 ½ Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

Well, this loaf is a little taller than yesterday's, but it's still about half as tall as I'd like. 

The loaf on the right is yesterday's.  Ideally, I'd like it to fill at least ¾ of the bread pad.  Today's loaf was just a little over half.  Perhaps the yeast need some fresh white flour to eat during the knead and rise cycle.  The dough ball still looked good during the mixing, so I think the water content is OK.  Maybe I'll try it with some vital gluten added.  I'm going to try one more ounce of water, as well.  When I was perfecting the commercial yeast version of this recipe, I reduced the water because the dough was rising too much and falling back.

Another thought is to just punt and give up on adapting this recipe for sourdough.  It worked so well with commercial yeast before I got on this sourdough kick.

I think this loaf is edible.  Check back in a couple of days once I've had a chance to make a couple of sandwiches.

Update: Yes it makes a decent sandwich.  I'd still like it to be lighter.

Next: Take 3