Seeking wholemeal bread advice
Hi,
I'm pretty new to baking bread. I've made maybe about 12 to 15 loaves so far. I was using a recipe which was a quick 4 step recipe which required mixing the ingredients, putting the dough in the bread tins for 1 hour to rise, and then baking from there.
I found a more conventional recipe today in a UK Good Housekeeping recipe book, a good old fashioned book.
That seems more conventional, in that you mix the dough, knead it, and then leave it in the bowl to double in size. That I did today, and it really rose well. Then the recipe said to knock all of the air out of it and squash it flat with your knuckles, knead it again, and then place in the tins and leave to rise again. I did that, and baked the bread.
Unfortunately the loaves have a huge hole in the middle (they looked great from the outside). The texture of the bread around the hole is very dense and pretty inedible. It's like thick stodgy dough.
I wonder what I did wrong? Would it be not kneading it enough after I'd knocked the air out before placing the dough in the tins? It had certainly risen to the top of the tins before I baked it, and I baked it on gas mark 8 for about 25 minutes.
Any advice would be much apprecaited.
Thanks!