at least it's an ethos...

americastestkitchen:

Cooking Tip of the Day: Unlike all-purpose, whole-wheat flour has both bran & germ. This inhibits gluten development and results in denser bread.

this is an interesting polymer physics problem.  think of gluten molecules as a single link in one of these expanding sphere toys - the more links, the larger the sphere becomes.  the same holds true for gluten encapsulated air bubbles - the more glutens chained together, the larger the bubble can become.  lots of large bubbles equals lighter bread.  with less gluten formation, the bubbles are forced to remain smaller giving a denser bread.