Why does my brown bread crumble?

[phoenixfox]

I made the brown seeded loaf from the avoca cafe cookbook. It looked very impressive but when I cut it, it was really crumbly. I had to cut it quite thick and it still fell apart. What did I do wrong? The recipe said between 1 and 1 1/2 pints of milk and I used 1 pint. Should I have used less milk? Or more?

What flour did you use? Was it "strong flour"/"bread flour" or ordinary flour for baking cakes?

wholemeal and other 'heavy' flours need a lot more kneading to release the gluten, did you bake it by hand or a bread machine?

It was ordinary plain flour and extra coarse wholemeal. I added bran and wheatgerm. It was just done in the mixer. No kneading required. The recipe just said add the milk to the dry ingredients and pour into tin! Thanks for the replies!!

Does the recipe include yeast? If so, then it's a bread and needs strong bread flour. But then it would surely include kneading. So I expect that there isn't any yeast in the recipe, in which case it's a cake and is likely to be relatively crumbly. I find that adding 1oz of ground almonds to any all-in-one cake mix often improves the texture enormously, without affecting the taste.

google suggests it's a recipe without yeast, so more like a soda bread than yeast bread, that's why it's crumbly

i think