Hi all,

  Firtstly, I'm sorry if this is the wrong bit of the forum or if this has been answered a million times before. I've done some searching but can't find much about my particular problem. 

Firstly, my recipe is super simple:

• 500g wholemeal flour

• 0.5 tbsp of salt & sugar

• 7g packet of dried action yeast

• I mix everything together rub in some butter, tip onto a surface and titrate just over 0.5 pints of water at 110 degrees F, then knead, put in a tin and wait to rise.

• Preheat oven to gas mark 6 and bake for about 30 mins

I've been trying to learn how to get my (basic and simple) bread to rise properly for some time, and I think I just recently managed to get it under control. I had a lot of issues with wholemeal breads not rising and being more or less inedible, but I eventually realized that I was not kneading the dough enough. It lakes about 10 mins of kneading for white flour and about 30 mins of kneading for wholemeal flour (or a mostly wholemeal mix). The yeast I was using was tescos fast action dry yeast and after many failures I've gotten it to the point where I can consistently make a decent loaf. Some things I've learnt are that if I leave it to rise for too long it deflates in the oven, so I've got into the habit of putting it in a preheated oven when it's risen to about 1 inch over the top of the tin, then I tend to get a nice oven spring.

It's always been my biggest problem is either it not rising at all, or not springing in the oven. And now I changed to Allinson active dry yeast, these problems are back. With my last loaf, everything seemed to go as planned, and I put it in the oven at the usual point (risen to 1 inch above the tin) and...nothing, it just sat there.

Any suggestions before I go mad? What the heck do I have to do to get a consistent oven spring?