Baking – Converting yeast amounts from old recipes

I can't speak to your specific flour but I have worked with coarsely ground whole wheat flour.

My standard bread recipes required quite a bit more kneading than usual. Additionally I had to work with them while they were still quite sticky to eventually get them to an elastic consistency.

I use a stand mixer to do the kneading for me- I'm afraid that it would be quite a mess doing it by hand. Remember that, when forming gluten, you can always trade work for time. If you can't find finer flour then I would recommend kneading the dough as much as you are able, let it rest for 15 minutes so the proteins relax, and then knead it again and see if you can't get the consistency you want without kneading all day.

Make sure the flour isn't so coarse, or has shards or bran, that would actually cut the gluten and prevent it from forming sheets. If this is the case then I don't know if you could make bread out of it predominantly. Perhaps if it were soaked overnight as in a poolish?

I mill my own flour to the finest possible setting and this seems to produce a much better textured bread.

As for the lack of rising and yeast- it is the same problem. Yeast are perfectly happy eating damaged starch in your flour. Adding sugar wouldn't necessarily help. If your dough was not elastic and failed your window pane test then there is nothing to really hold the structure of the bread. Your yeast may have been going crazy and there was just no balloon for them to blow up.

There are some previous questions with good answers like this one, or this that go into much more detail than I'm about to.

You said your bread didn't rise with the first rise, if you don't have a first rise you can't go onto the next step. If your yeast was old, or the temperature was cold in your kitchen or you used cold water in the dough, or the yeast came in contact with salt then its action could have been slowed down drastically and it would take much longer to get a rise. I've had a first rise take up to 4 hours in the past because of these factors. The times given in recipes are just guidelines, you have to be result-driven. Active dry yeast also takes longer than quick yeast to activate. When using active dry instead of quick yeast you would get better results by mixing it with the water before mixing in. I'd recommend using quick yeast as it's milled into smaller grains and you can mix it directly into the flour.

Of course your yeast may have simply been dead, or killed by salt or heat. Get some good fresh yeast and store it in the fridge to keep it fresh long-term.

Also, using all whole wheat flour isn't going to produce anything like a baguette. Whole wheat flour is very heavy compared to white flour and will take longer to rise. A half and half mix would work better. I'd recommend sticking to the recipe first, then gradually modifying it over time until you get your desired result.