Hello again Jacque,
I hope you don’t give up because you have everything you could possibly need except maybe a digital scale and you’re very persistent.
I have a few ideas you could try: your dough looks like it may be too dry it looks like you may have either been too heavy handed on the flour or not enough water. Too stiff dough can definitely give you thick hard crust and inhibit rising too.
Also in your photo it looks like you are using two whole-wheat flours. I’m pretty sure the sprouted wheat flour in the green bag is a whole grain flour and theonein the brown and red bag is whole wheat for sure. Whole grain flours need quite a bit more liquid than white flour. If you use 100% whole wheat flour you will have a heavy dense loaf almost certainly. If you add not enough liquid to that you can easily get a brick.
Here’s my last idea: try using at least 2/3 while flour and only 1/3 whole wheat. Make sure your dough feels soft and resilient , not stiff. Go ahead and knead it inyour breadmachine even if you are going to bake it in a pan in the oven. Use your yeast until you get a successful bread loaf. It’s much easier to start out with a yeast loaf in the beginning and there’s quite a few yeast recipes on this website. Go ahead and keep your sourdough starter going so you can be ready to use it later. use it later. In fact, just put a big spoonful of it in your dough right along with the yeast. It can’t hurt and there’s no rule that says you can’t put both in. It might even improve the flavor a bit!
If your bread machine came with a recipe book—use a recipe from it with the mostly white flour version. The turkey roaster would be a good way to keep some moisture around your loafpan if it’s tall enough and has enough headroom for the bread to rise. You won’t need to put water in the roaster because the steam from the bread cooking will be enough.
If your dough is moist enough and you are baking in a bread pan, it’s not really necessary to put any water in your oven at all or use an enclosed pan.
The suggestion someone else gave to try Eric’s original no knead recipe using yeast that is posted on the website is a good idea. It was posted a long time ago—maybe even in 2010, but you can still find it listed under the recipes as No Knead bread with yeast.
I love your dog Muffin. She seems to be enjoying your bread just fine!
Soldier on, buddy. Your persistence will pay off!
Cheers