OmNomNom!

The making of certain baked goods is in my DNA - almost all my ancestors, on both sides of the family, made excellent pie crust, baking powder biscuits, and yeast breads. Whole-wheat flour doesn't contain as much gluten as white flour (and even that comes in levels of gluten content from high-gluten bread flour down to low-gluten, soft, bleached cake flour). But gluten isn't much of a factor in things like soda bread; in fact, you only knead it just barely enough to pull it all together, because kneading it enough to develop the gluten makes it tough. I was, however, still expecting a crumbly, dry texture, not the delightful smoothness I got!