Why is my wholemeal loaf dense and short?

A 100 per cent wholemeal loaf will never be as tall or as light as a white one, and pretending otherwise sets people up to fail. The bran fragments in wholemeal flour are sharp-edged and physically sever gluten strands as the dough is worked, so the network that traps gas is weaker no matter how well you knead. At the same time the bran and germ absorb a great deal of water, so a wholemeal dough made at a white-flour hydration is genuinely dry and tight. Fixing the water and the timing gets you most of the way; the rest is deciding how much white flour you are willing to include.

What you'll need

• Strong wholemeal bread flour
• Digital scales

Step by step

1. Increase the water.Take the white-flour hydration up by five to ten percentage points. A 65 per cent white loaf becomes a 72–75 per cent wholemeal one and will still feel firmer to handle than the white dough did.
2. Let it autolyse.Mix flour and water only, and leave it for thirty to sixty minutes before adding salt and yeast. Bran hydrates slowly and this rest lets it take up the water, so it stops stealing it from the gluten later. It also softens the bran edges.
3. Use strong wholemeal, not plain wholemeal.Ordinary wholemeal flour sold for cakes and scones has too little protein to build a loaf. Strong or 'bread' wholemeal is a different product and the packet will say so.
4. Prove longer, not warmer.Wholemeal ferments faster in one sense — there is more food for the yeast — but the weaker gluten means the loaf needs to be caught at exactly the right point. Watch the dough rather than the clock; a wholemeal dough over-proved is one of the flattest things you can bake.
5. Handle it gently and shape it firmly.Contradictory but real: do not degas it aggressively, but do build surface tension at shaping. Wholemeal has less structural reserve than white, so it cannot afford to lose gas it will not replace.
6. Bake it in a tin.A tin supports the sides so the loaf goes up rather than out. Free-standing wholemeal loaves are much harder to get height into and a tin is not a compromise, it is the standard form for this bread.
7. If it is still too heavy, blend the flour.Two-thirds wholemeal to one-third strong white gives a noticeably lighter crumb with almost all of the flavour. Half and half is lighter again. This is what most commercial 'wholemeal' bread does.

Tips

• A tablespoon of vital wheat gluten per 500g of wholemeal flour is a legitimate, well-established fix for height, and it is sold in most supermarkets.
• A little fat — a tablespoon of oil or soft butter — softens the crumb noticeably and helps the loaf keep longer.
• Soaking a portion of the wholemeal flour or some cracked grains overnight (a soaker) gives a softer crumb and a better flavour with no extra work on the day.
• Wholemeal flour goes stale in a way white flour does not, because of the oil in the germ. Six months in a cupboard is enough to change the result.

Common mistakes

• Making a wholemeal loaf on a white-flour recipe without changing the water — The dough is effectively ten points drier than intended, and no amount of kneading will fix an underhydrated dough.
• Kneading harder to make up for the weak gluten — More mechanical work means more bran cutting more strands. Time and hydration build wholemeal structure better than force does.

If it doesn't work