Whole wheat bread competition

I bake a lot of bread. A lot. But They're usually sweet breads or in roll form. I haven't been able to perfect a wheat bread that I can use for sandwiches. I'd like to make and not buy sandwich bread every week. So today I chose two recipes to test to try and find a good "go to" recipe for whole wheat sandwich bread.

The first recipe, as usual, came from the King Arthur Flour website. It's their whole wheat sandwich bread. I made the recipe as called for, except I used their whole grain dough improver, which is supposed to help the dough rise to avoid a dense loaf, which is what  I usually get. For some reason this dough was way too wet. I never get a dough this wet and questioned my measuring abilities, but I don't think that was the problem. I ended up having to add about another 1/2 cup of flour to the dough to make it better, though it was still a little wet.

In for the rise...

The second recipe came from my bag of Gold Medal whole wheat flour. While usually a KAF fan for most flours, I think this bag was on sale, and price usually wins with me. The recipe on the bag was their honey whole wheat bread. Only, I didn't have any honey. Which I discovered only after mixing all of the dry ingredients in the bowl. Always make sure you have everything you need! Luckily I found a substitution online that included corn syrup and sugar. I hope it works. I mixed everything together which also created a sticky dough, though much less so than the KAF dough. Here it is ready for the first rise...

Here they are after the first rise. They both rose up pretty well in the oven.
KAF

And GM

I deflated and shaped both loaves and put them into their loaf pans for a second rise...
KAF

and GM

After about 45 minutes, they had both risen and were ready to bake. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of the KAF post-rise. Oops. Since the baking instructions were different for each loaf, I baked the KAF loaf first and let the other loaf rise a little more out of the oven in a warm spot.
After 35 minutes the first loaf was ready. When I took it out of the pan I could tell it was a little dense. Not as bad as other attempts though.

I put the second loaf in, which had risen ALOT while the first loaf baked. Actually, some of the dough had fallen over the side of the pan a little. Though a little odd looking, it did feel a lot lighter and airier than the KAF loaf. Here it is before sent to the oven.

See that flop over the side. I should have cut it off before I put it in the oven. The loaf came out very mis-shapen, although bery light and airy.

Here they are side by side. The one on the left is KAF, GM is on the right.

I decided to have Ron and I taste the loaves with dinner. Cutting into the loaves, the GM loaf had the upper hand with a lighter texture and more air holes.
KAF

GM

Side by side

Before I even tried a piece, I could tell who the clear winner was. The GM loaf was lighter (in color and texture) and it's flavor wasn't as strong as the KAF bread. This may be because it was so dense, and it was dense, but it still had good flavor. They both had a really nice flavor and went well with butter as a side for our turkey shepherd's pie for dinner. Ron preferred the KAF bread for dinner, and the GM for sandwiches. And since sandwich bread is what I wanted, this is the recipe that will be a go-to for me. Although next time I plan to have honey on hand, though the substitution obviously worked well enough!