I've found Peter Reinhart's methods to produce an easy, consistent, extremely tasty and well-risen whole grain bread. It does require letting the dough soak overnight.
Also if you have a coarse-ground flour you can also sift out the bran, soak it separately and fold it into the dough later, which allows the gluten to develop a bit without getting cut by the bran. That’s kind of a pain though so I don’t usually do it.