I always try to teach from a perspective of understanding why we do things, why x, y, or z happens and what we are looking for to happen or not happen. In that vein, let me share some “Why?” on your bread crumb (structure of baked dough) and the different goals in bread baking vs pastry baking.
Recently I read, from a trusted source, the recommendation to use the 1lb., or 8” x 4” loaf pan when using whole wheat (freshly) milled flour. The larger pans give you a crumb that's able to hold up to spreading mayonnaise, but when you go to spread peanut butter, the ultimate test of crumb strength, your bread tears.
Why you may ask? Well, when we use the whole wheat berry, we have all three parts of the berry; bran, germ and endosperm. Hopefully your grain mill has done a nice job finely breaking down the bran specifically, but even so, bran is the outer protective shell of the wheat berry. Think of popcorn and that outer covering, which is insoluble (not easily broken down by liquid during digestion) fiber.
So what does this mean for your bread and crumb? Even though we have ground the bran very small, they are still sharp little guys and can cut the gluten strands we have developed. Now think of a rubber band. The further you stretch it, the easier it will be to cut because it is weak. It is the same with the gluten strands. When we ask it to stretch really far in that larger pan, we weaken each strand and then those bran bits have an easy time cutting them.
For those of you using a Zojirushi bread machine with a 2 lb pan, you may see this issue and think you have done something wrong. Even with everything set really well, the size of this pan will add this challenge. A couple work arounds 1) Use the Zo machine to make the dough, then bake it in 1 lb pans. Generally a 1 lb loaf will bake at 350ºF for about 37-42 mins to 205ºF. 2) Lightly toast the bread before spreading that peanut butter.
Let's tag off this topic and go to pastries. Think of the age-old instruction to not over-mix recipes like pie crust or the dough will become tough; “mix just till incorporated.” The reason for this is that in pie crust or muffins or cookies etc. we do not want to develop the gluten strands! We don’t want the stretchy aspect of the wheat, we want it to be light, tender and flakey.
To aid in this goal, we use pastry flour, our Frederick soft white wheat, which is lower in the gluten developing proteins; glutenin and gliadin. Also our soft wheats have a thinner layer of bran which helps it be lighter weight, a characteristic we desire in pastry baking. When you really want a light, flakey outcome, sifting out the bran is recommended. Keep this for special occasions since you will also lose the nutrients from the bran which includes a lot of vitamin E and iron.