Maddening Bread.

I've been making my own whole wheat bread every week for a couple of months now. I often wonder WHY I do this because I'm terrible at it. Most of the time, the loaves don't rise properly and one of the loaves is always way smaller than the other, no matter what I do. Today, I made 2 loaves that were the worst yet. I thought I finally realized the problem so I made 2 more loaves, trying to avoid the mistake. Those 2 were better, but not much. I noticed yet another mistake so I gave it one more go. Jeez, am I obsessive or what? This time I researched online for a new recipe and found one that looked promising. It's done completely in the mixer and it was really detailed, which is totally what I needed. These came out much, much better. Now I know my main mistakes were not using enough flour and not kneading long enough.





Above photos are of the first loaves. You can see how wimpy the rise was. And the crust is rough and dense.





Much better!