Do you do anything to increase the gluten? When I've tried whole-wheat bread, it just kind of falls apart when sliced. I've tried adding "Vital Wheat Gluten", but even a tablespoon to a loaf didn't seem to help. Thanks!
Try soaking your flour overnight to hydrate the bran, which otherwise can slice up the gluten network. Also, if you're kneading and the surface splits, stop let it sit for five to ten minutes so the gluten can relink before you continue.
I think home-ground whole-wheat flour has to have more gluten than pretty much any other flour out there...
Are you putting a whole bunch of other stuff in there? There's a reason fat is called "shortening" -- it breaks the gluten strands, and makes the bread crumbly. Unless you're putting a whole bunch of butter or some other fat into the flour, I can't imagine why it would be crumbly.
Whole-wheat flour has everything that white flour has (including gluten), plus more. If you remove the "more", the proportion of gluten in the whole goes up.
The "more" also includes fat, as well as other things which might interfere with gluten formation.
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