Mixed results from 3 attempts (beginner)

before baking?  

These are three very different recipes.  My suggestion would be to stick to one until it works for you, then apply that knowledge to other recipes carefully.  Do not wait until your yeast is frothy before adding to your mix, all the yeast has to do is be dissolved.   Another suggestion would be to let the dough stand longer before starting to knead, say 20 minutes to absorb water, then half the kneading is done for you and it will be less sticky.  When watching the first rise or bulk rise, let the dough double, watch the dough not the clock.    

I am carefully looking over your write up as it took you quite some time to be detailed.  I will get back to you.

I suggest you select a known author and buy the book. There are  many in the UK to choose from. Leader comes to mind. You could also look at the lessons found here at the top of every page. What ever you do, pick one and work on that as mini said until you understand the important steps and get good results.

Eric

Mini and Eric have given excellent suggestions, which I strongly support.  Working with a known formula and understanding it is much easier than bashing together bits and pieces of several other formulae.

But, since you asked...

Attempt 1 has, as close as matters, 200g of water to 250g of whole-meal flour.  In baker's percentages, that's an 80% hydration level.  Even allowing for the extra absorption of a whole-meal flour, that will be a sticky and difficult to manage dough.  Working the butter into the flour before incorporating the liquids, as if you were making scones, interferes with the flour's ability to form long gluten chains.  Between the bran in the whole-grain flour and the effects of the butter shortening (both literally and nominally) the gluten in the flour, it would be difficult to achieve anything but a dense loaf.  If you aren't accustomed to baking with whole-meal flours, you will find doughs made with them to be "heavier" than the dough for the same bread made with entirely white flour.  And stickier, too.  Suggestion: combine the milk, water, treacle and flour and let them have a good long soak; an hour or two, say.  Then mix in the salt, yeast and butter and give it a good knead.  Moving on: I'm not sure I fully understand what you did for the second rise.  My read is that the dough was left to ferment, unshaped, for an hour in the same container used for the first ferment, then placed in your baking dish and straight into the oven.  Have I understood correctly?  If so, the dough may have more than doubled (I don't see mention of that in your write-up) before being baked.  That could also lead to a flat loaf, since much of the gas could be lost while handling the transfer from one dish to the other.  It looks to me that the problem lies more with your process than with your ingredients.  Eight grams of dry yeast is quite a bit for a bread made with 250g of flour, so the bread wasn't under-leavened.  You had plenty of water.  The dough did not suffer from excessive kneading.  As a matter of fact, some authors would have you knead a whole-meal dough 20-30 minutes by hand to achieve a smooth, light crumb in the finished bread. [Edit: When I first read your account, I missed that you introduced a second kneading at the end of the first ferment.  The total kneading time isn't bad, but the timing of a second kneading after the first ferment isn't necessarily helpful.] I agree that it may have been baked too long, considering the size of the loaf.  All  the more so if your oven has a fan.

Attemps 2 and 3 are variations on the same theme, except that you added rye flour which will make the dough even stickier and the bread more likely to be flat, since rye doesn't contribute gluten in the same way as the wheat flour that it replaces.  I am surprised that you were able to achieve a dough with Attempt 3, since you mention using 50g of water and 170g of flour.  That equates to a 29% hydration, which would make nothing but crumbs for me.  It also sounds as though you are only allowing the dough to ferment once in the second and third attempts, then baking it immediately after having knocked back the dough and shaping it.  If I have understood you correctly, then those doughs never had an opportunity to reinflate during a second fermentation, leading to dense breads.

Would I be right to surmise that you have only recently begun baking yeasted bread?  I ask because it sounds as though you are doing things that you have read about in the various sources you referenced but don't yet have an understanding of why those things are done or how they affect the outcome.  Please forgive me if that sounds disparaging in any way.  That is not my intent.  What I hope is that you to develop an understanding of how ingredients and techniques work together to result in the breads that you want.  With that in mind, please click on the Handbook link at the top of the page.  You will find that it gives a very good introduction to how bread works.  After reading it and thinking about it (and maybe even experimenting with some of it), ask all of the questions that you want.  Everybody here started out knowing nothing about baking bread and are working toward getting better at it.  You will find lots of people who are willing to share their learning with you, just as some already have.

Best regards,

Paul

I hope you don't mind.  I copied and commented in the recipe.    Thoughts and ideas  in bold.  I understand you want to keep small loaves.  Is the oven also small?

--- ATTEMPT #1 ---
100 ml water                                    Hydration: 80%     Low salt: 2 pinches = 0.2g   1%=2.5g  Use more salt helps                                                       protein bonding in gluten. 
1 teaspoon of treacle                       treacle  -no relative influence-
100 ml cold milk                           More than enough yeast and left too long to froth, would reduce to half the                                                         amount or even a pinch.  Would scald the milk to reduce enzymes.
8 g dried active yeast                       (Allinson). Yeast mixture allowed to settle for 10 mins to activate the yeast and                                                                                    develop a head of froth (less than 1cm).
250 g wholemeal bread flour          (Sainsbury's own brand) into a warmed mixing bowl.  Suggest cold bowl for                                                                longer  fermenting time.   Soaking wholemeal flour with flecks always a                                                          good idea.
2 small pinches of salt                      added and mixed into the flour.    Left the bowl to warm the flour for a few mins.
6 g butter                                                added that to the warm flour and mixed in by hand.   Oops, butter should be                                                              added with wet ingredients.  Could use more oil or butter.

469.2 g  total dough weight (small loaf)        

Added the frothy yeast liquid to the flour and mixed in using a wooden spoon to clump into one large ball of dough. This was then left to stand for a few mins to allow the flour to absorb the moisture.  Let stand longer… at least 20 to 30 min. covered.  It saves you kneading time and will feel less sticky.
Dough hand-kneaded for 10 mins.
OBSERVATION: the dough was heavy and VERY sticky.  Wet dough.  Should use some folding to build gluten during the bulk rise.
Dough covered and left to rise for 30 mins (in a warm place).
The dough roughly doubled in size.    Very Good!

Knocked down and then kneaded the dough the second time for 10-12 mins.  Kneaded?  Possibly overworked and too much flour added.  Simple envelope folds would have helped more.

Dough covered and left to rise for an hour (30 mins in a warm place, 30 mins at room temperature).  Why not shape and rise directly into pyrex dish?
Dough placed in a Pyrex dish.    Not sure what is going on.   Did it degas or was reshaped?   How long was dough in pyrex dish before baking?  Did it pass a poke test?

Dish placed in oven pre-heated to 210 degrees C for 15 mins.    Reduced the over temperature to 180 degrees C and baked the dough for 30 mins.  Too long.  Dried out the loaf.  Shorten baking time.

RESULT: loaf flat with a thick and heavy crust. The inside was softish but more like a crisp-bread such as Ryvita. It was tasty enough. Edible, but only just. Very hard to slice with a bread-knife, although slices did stay intact. Obviously over-cooked. More than likely.  Possibly "broken dough" syndrome from excessive kneading. Hard to do by hand. Possibly insufficient water. Only if a lot of flour was added with the second knead.  Possibly insufficient yeast. Not likely.

That one comes out to 102% and would even challenge me!   A little doughy in the center means it didn't quite finish baking.  Either use less water in the dough or lengthen the baking time.  The fact that you removed it from the tin leads me to believe that the pan did not sit low enough in the oven during the bake.  

Hydration is determined by adding up the water & milk weights and divide by the flour weight.  You could go down to 65% without any problems and still turn out a decent loaf.  That would be roughly a total of 300g of milk & water.  Did you manage to work in more flour during the kneading?  There is plenty of room between 300g and 460g to experiment without having to worry about too dry a dough.  When mixing dough by hand, often the term shaggy dough is referred to lower hydrated doughs because it looks dryer (no pockets of flour) but is still moistened, not smooth but shaggy.  Letting it stand covered for 30 min to absorb the water does wonders for that dough texture and the dough works just fine.  With a high hydration dough, I'd be more tempted to use a mixer, letting the machine work up the sweat for the initial kneading.  Try reading more on high hydration dough or 100% hydration to compare.    

Glad to see you turned out a much improved loaf!   Your learning journey is well on the way!

Mini