Push-button Whole Wheat

I thought I wasn't going to need to make bread until next weekend, but it seems that mold spores decided to eat my last loaf before I could.  That left me without bread and without the luxury of planning a day in advance to prepare everything. To make matters worse, I have a singing lesson after work that will keep me away from home until about 6:30 PM.  That wouldn't leave much time for the bread machine cycle to finish before I went to bed.

I decided to try my two-step process that I used some weeks ago where I let my sponge mature right on top of the rest of the ingredients.  I tried this with my whole wheat recipe. 

I started by refreshing my starter over night.  Then, this morning, I intended to put all of the ingredients except for the sponge in the bread pan, add the sponge on top, and set the delay timer on my bread machine for about 12 hours.  The idea being that the kneading and baking take between 3 and 4 hours.  That gives the sponge 8 hours to grow

The recipe is

Whole Wheat, Take 6
Remove 4 oz. of starter.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	4 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups
White flour	1  cup
Vital Gluten	none
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

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Only in this case, I didn't set the sponge aside.  I put all of the other ingredients in the bread pan, with the white flour on top, and the whole wheat flour just under that.  Then, I added the just-mixed sponge on top and set the delay timer to have the bread ready in 12 hours.

My intention, was to get this set up and started before I left for work, and come home 12 hours later, after my voice lesson, to a completed loaf of bread.

Unfortunately (for me, not the bread) I was greeted by a migraine as I was getting ready for work, so I decided to stay home.  Not so good for my head, but it allowed me to document the progress of my push-button bread recipe.

With all of the ingredients in the bread pan and the immature sponge on top, I have this:

After several hours, that grows into this:

After the first mixing cycle (several more hours later), I have a nice looking dough ball.

It sticks slightly to the pan as the paddle moves it around, but it doesn't get stuck.  In the end, I have this lovely loaf of bread.