Oh bread, how you frustrate me

Why is it so hard for me to find a whole-wheat artisan style bread that really works? I was not happy with the results of the 50-50 whole wheat/white flour blend using the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day recipe. I've had some success with loaf pans but I'm a crust girl--I want a freeform loaf with lots of crusty goodness. I thought that the problem when I made the first batch using ABi5MaD was that my yeast was old. But we stirred up another batch with a fresh bag of yeast and it wasn't much better. The search continues...