6 times and out of luck

The Pandesal recipe I used before was a perfect one for my family that I have done another variation of it. I tried baking it with no breadcrumbs and less time in the oven by a couple of minutes and it yielded soft buttery dinner rolls. And we so loved it that it is bookmarked already for future buns and rolls.

Since I am on a mission of not buying commercial breads any more and I wanted to make whole wheat loaf bread, I have been experimenting on this recipe. I used it as a base for all the adjustments I made to hopefully produce the perfect whole wheat loaf.

This experiment has made me try on changing the ingredients slightly 6 times. Yes 6 times over the period of 2 1/2 weeks! And that is a whole lot of loafs! Good thing they were all edible since I haven't bought any bread since then. Husband and Toddler are just the best since they still ate it all without any complaints. Loafs were OK in taste and it had structure because it doesn't crumble when you slice it. They just didn't produce the same softness and the grainy flavour I miss from commercial brands. I tried everything in this experiment. I have tried exchanging 1 cup of bread flour to 1 cup of whole wheat and lessen it more to just 7%, adding more water, letting it rise for just 4 hours and not let it rise overnight, using a sponge method and adding baking soda, changing baking time. But I still can't get the right result for me using this recipe. I can't seem to troubleshoot this issue properly.

6 times and still no luck so this would be my last attempt to use this recipe for whole wheat loaf bread and look for another working recipe. Lesson learned: I really need to research more on this bread baking thing. It's a little complicated fun thing. Plus I think I need to get me one of those thermometer for cooking and baking.