Here’s my most recent bake. A pretty dry and manageable dough, 1/3 bread flour 2/3 whole grain flours (red and white wheats).
Two rounds of stretching and folding, and I took the bulk pretty far. I divided the dough, preshaped, bench rest short 15 minutes, proofed 20 minutes at room temp and then into the refrigerator. Baked the next morning.
Wow! You got that with so much whole grain. Beauty! Is it because it’s wheat and not rye? What was the hydration? Was the inoculation wholly starter or did you employ a levain? Also, that container looks like it bulked 100%? (I mean, I presume that’s not 4L of starter! 
)
The container is slightly fluted, so looking at the markings, I’d say it bulked from about 2.2 L to about 3.3 L so maybe 50% expansion. I guess not as far as I initially thought.
75% hydration
16% ripe starter/levain
Here’s an example of a more open crumb that I get with more water and more gluten development on 75% bread flour, 20% whole wheat, and 5% rye. However you can scroll to the last comment and see that skipping some of the process (no autolyse, no gluten development) didn’t make for a bad loaf at all. Less ear, more honeycomb crumb.
When I was baking for the photo shoot for Eric’s and my sourdough book, I did actually make 2L of starter 
chocolate babkas not in the pic 
Wow. So you’re kind of a big deal! Glad to be getting your input. Thanks!
BTW, what’s the book title?
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I don’t know about big deal, but obsessed and devoted to sourdough baking, yes!
Here’s a link to the book. It’s available on Kindle too. Some overlap with recipes you can find on the Blog – Breadtopia
I’d say writing a book and founding a popular baking website’s pretty big.
Say I thought I’d share my success today. I baked what I feel is my idea sourdough!
I got a good rise and an excellent ear. The crumb is just what I’m looking for. Plenty of good-sized holes but not the kind you can drive a truck thru. Even got some of that surface bubble action for once. It is 20/80 whole wheat/white which, I dunno, you can tell me if that made a difference but I’m going to go back to rye and utilize the same process.
That process being starting with a levain and autolyse. Two loaves in succession has kind of convinced me.
Anyway, here’s what it looks like:
That is a gorgeous loaf of bread. Congratulations 
it looks like you have found a process that works great for you. I think adding a lot of rye may tighten up the crumb and speed up the fermentation, but 5-10% won’t make a big difference to those things and adds a nice rye flavor.
Thanks! Yeah, pretty happy with it.
Re: your rye comment, just so I understand you, fermentation (I’m always getting it mixed up with proofing) is the time spent in the fridge (12-24 hrs) and proofing is the first rise before shaping??? Or other way around? (oy, but then there’s bulk proofing! Ach!!!)
BTW I would go with 20% rye, typically.
Fermentation is the whole thing: starting from the moment you add the microbes and ending with the moment your dough gets above around 115F (don’t quote me) and the yeast/bacteria die in the oven.
Commonly, people refer to the first rise as the “bulk fermentation” and the second rise as the “final proof.”
BTW, referring back to the origin of this thread, I have achieved windowpaning 2 loaves in a row using the levain/autolyse ! Who knew? It’s nice to see a bit of consistency.
Well, this last loaf had strange aspect. The crumb was good in general but the larger holes were in the bottom half of the loaf and the upper half was fine bu the holes were smaller. I thought I saw a YT vid mentioning that phenomenon but I can’t find it. Oh well. Deliciou, nonetheless…AND I used 20% rye instead of WW.
Nice! 20% rye and windowpanes 
If you are stitching your dough in the proofing basket as a final shaping step this might create some large bubbles that then are at the base of the loaf. Just a guess.
