Perfecting the Whole Wheat Recipe, Take 4

I enjoyed my sour cream rye bread from last week.  Despite its heaviness, it made good sandwiches, and I especially liked it on its own as a piece of toast with butter or olive oil.

Now, I am going back to trying to get a better result from my whole wheat recipe.  I'm thinking that the sourdough sponge might need some fresh white flour to eat during the rising process, so I added ¼ cup of white flour.  The additional flour will need additional water.  I tried increasing from 3 oz. to 4, but that still left a lot of unmixed flour in the corners of the pan.  I added one more ounce, and got this nice looking dough ball.

It is stickier than I would like if I were kneading it by hand, but it should be fine in the bread machine.  It sticks a little bit to the sides of the pan as the paddle is kneading it.

Another change is that I've increased the vital gluten to 1 tablespoon.  Now, my recipe looks like this:

	Whole Wheat
Preparation	The night 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 overnight.
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	5 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼  cups
White flour	¼ cup
Vital Gluten	1 Tbl
Salt	1 tsp
Butter	1 ½ Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

The loaf still came out a little short

It's not much taller than Take 3 or Take2

It also had this weird light colored shell in the crust.

Still, it tastes really good.  I think I finished tinkering with this recipe.  It may never rise as high as the commercial yeast version, but it makes a tasty loaf of bread that is good for sandwiches or for toast.  I'm going to stick with it.

Next, I'm going to try to simplify the process so that it needs less interaction with the baker (me).