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Substitute 2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1/3 cup honey, to the recipe to get an outstanding honey whole wheat bread.

A couple of problems you have when making bread is low gluten content and aging flour.

I love dark rye breads, but they don't rise, no gluten in rye flour. Whole wheat goes sour when it is aged, I can't remember the agent.

If you get into the bread thing, learn to make a levan, sour dough, poolish. Remember that most commercial dark rye's are dyed, I use coffee for pumpernickel, read the ingredient label.

A good book is “The Bread Makers Apprentice” note that he under hydrates his breads. My brother had some impute, remember making bread is like doing math formula A+B=C, get a good scale.

Thank you for the informative post. I didn't know about aged flour which could be the cause of some of my failures. Also I don't bake yeasty items very often so my yeast loses potency. And I learned not to buy 5# of whole wheat flour because I don't use it fast enough and it went bad quickly so I started keeping it in the freezer the little packages I was able to get. Also polenta which is hard to find locally, used a lot of that in place of regular corn meal.

The whole wheat I had to have for my steamed brown bread. And I got those down pat where it didn't seem like so much work, using large cans and a big dutch oven with a rack for a steamer.

Don't expect too much of me. I don't like making bread because it has too many steps to it to do it right. I want to make some more square sandwich rolls which were a great success last year and have been putting it off. (Phyllis Stokes on youtube).

I did want to try, however, that one you gave me because of those Croque (sp?) Monsieur sandwiches. Those are a lot of work, too. Also Bruno Albouze made the most absolutely gorgeous bread pudding from pannetone I have ever seen. I haven't gotten around to making that either, and he puts expensive glaceed citrus peel (lemon and orange) to make it pretty and tasty. Yeah I've made my own orange peel and it's a huge amount of fussing.

But I get hours of pleasure thinking of all the things I would make again if I had the energy and ambition I used to. And it is a shame because the internet has opened a whole new avenue for improving my cooking skills I wish I had known all those years ago when I had to cook a lot.

Thank you again. I might try your basic pullman recipe but I've looked at pumpernickel and rye recipes and would rather just buy those. I love those breads though. I like the little square pumpernickel loafs for cheese, etc., snacks and the other makes great grilled cheese sandwiches.