Help! Dough felt great but bread was heavy
I'm still a novice, mainly aiming for a great multigrain/wholegrain loaf with consistency. I've turned out many great loaves but am still getting inconsistent results. I just can't tell if I've done enough, or too much, kneading.
I'm currently using Peter Rinehart's Whole Grain Breads recipe for "Transitional Multigrain Sandwich Bread". I'm using a locally grown and milled Red Fife whole wheat flour which is a bit tricky in itself, but this recipe is about half all purpose/bread flour.
The dough for the last loaves I made seemed just fine (although I may have left the bulk ferment for longer than I should have). I wouldn't say it passed the "window pane test" but since there are so many coarse grains in the recipe (soaked overnight) it's hard to tell, so I just carried on since the dough felt really nice otherwise.
I knew I was in trouble when the dough tops split while proofing in the pans, as if the dough was just too weak to hold together. The loaves never really rounded above the pan as I expected them to from previous experience, but I could tell they weren't going to so I baked them anyway. As expected, the bread was heavyish.
My question is: should I have kneaded the dough longer to achieve the "window pane test" even with all the grains, to strengthen the gluten? What does dough look like when it is kneaded too much?
Or was the weakness of the dough due to letting the dough rise too long on the bulk rise (Peter Rinehart asks for 1 1/2 times volume on bulk rise for his whole grain doughs but since this recipe is half all purpose flour, I didn't think one and a half times volume was enough.)
One more thing about kneading: I usually use the "french fold" method (following Richard Bertinet video) and a few stretch and folds. But in this case I followed Rinehart's recipe, which called for kneading, as closely as possible. (Tomorrow I will try the recipe using folds). Are the different methods interchangeable regardless of the recipe's instructions??
All thoughts on this will be much appreciated!
-Diane