Lumps in Bread - Hard 1/2 to 1/4 of a pea size

I don't know whether this is considered cross-posting or not, but I just posted this in reply to a responder at the baking ng. But I want to post it to this bread group to ask if a couple of other things could've gone wrong to make the little hard lumps in my dough.

Partial posting to Baking ng: "I had a bread-dough failure. I thought I'd take a shortcut and not cut the pate fermentee into

10 pieces because the kitchenaid does such a thorough job of mixing. But to my dismay the dough when kneaded had multitudes of pieces of hard-flour/dough throughout. I thought I'd try to save it and knead it awhile because the dough wasn't up to the 77 degrees, so I decided to use my Silipat ... "

Re: Reinhart's Recipe (p. 170 French Bread made with Pate Fermentee) I'm thinking perhaps these lumps might have also been caused by me doing this:

1) I added 1 teaspoon King Arthur

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Item 3413: diastatic malt powder to the flours and pate fermentee because on p. 170 he says "If your flour is organic and does not contain barley flour, you should add 1 teaspoon of diastic barley malt powder to the flour blend." My flour was King Arthur, and I'm pretty sure it is NOT organic, but I decided to add it anyway. However, what I added was not "diastatic barley malt powder" as written on Reinhart's recipe, but diastatic malt powder. Are they one and the same? Is all malt, barley? Would this 1 teaspoon cause so many little hardclumps/lumps of flour?

2) He says: "Add the water, stirring until everything comes together." - I added all at once.

3) The other day when I made this recipe, the dough was too dry, using the 6 ounces of water, and it was the same today, so I measured out another 1 ounce, but added only a partial amount, but each time I added it, it may a slurry around the mixer bowl.

4) The above reason, that I did not cut up the pate fermentee into 10 pieces before mixing, could this have caused the lumps.

Pick and choose: I can't think of anything else that might have caused these lumps, but I recall I've seen them in my bread dough before and the bread had little white dry spots after it had been baked. Not a real pretty sight, but edible; I would rather not have them.

Any help welcome, Thanks so much, Dee