Bread Fail: Whole Wheat Bread

I've made breads I didn't love, and cookies that weren't quite right. Nothing compares, though, to this seemingly innocent piece of dough that looks a little shy of ready to go into the oven:

Part of it was a time crunch - I just didn't give the poor dough long enough to rise, and gambled that it would all turn out ok. I mean, looking above, it rose quite a bit from this:

And it had all started out so well, with a starter, soaker and plenty of hard to work with whole wheat flour:

Here's the pathetic finished product. It was...dense: