Hello, and thank-you everyone for your contributions :-))

Hello from Hertfordshire in England! I've been baking bread for several years, simply by following the instructions on the bags of flour. I've usually produced reasonably good loaves, but always felt they could be better. Anyway, a few weeks ago I had a bit of a disaster when, for some unknown reason, my normally reliable procedure gave me some 80% whole wheat bricks - I know this will be familiar to many of you!

Having no idea what was wrong I googled 'bread like bricks', as you do, and so found your wonderful forum. From the very many helpful posts I learned much about how to make better bread and could probably write an essay about the all the things that might have caused my bricks. As many of your posts refer to Hamelman's book  I treated myself to a copy - now in its 2nd edition. Applying what I learned from many contributors to The Fresh Loaf I'm making better bread now than ever before. Here are some pics of a couple of loaves I made recently, one is Hamelman's Whole Wheat Bread (50% whole wheat with a preferment) and the other is Hamelman's Hand Mixed White Bread.