Gérard Rubaud's 3 stage levain loaves

I chanced upon MC's great blog on Gérard Rubaud and his breadmaking process and was rather captivated by it all - so much so that I had to give it a go!

I followed the process pretty faithfully, including the three stage salted 55% hydration levains with freshly milled flour and also the freshly milled flour in the final dough. I used my Mockmill on the finest possible setting to produce the freshly milled flour for the final dough.

I departed from Gérard's process slightly by going for a slightly reduced 75% hydration and retarding the shaped loaves overnight in the fridge and baking in the morning.

However, I have to say that the end result was a disappointment; I'd built myself up to thinking that this was going to be the perfect loaf, but the reality was a set of loaves with reasonable (not great) loft, a rather tight crumb and a tendency for the crumb to go dry rather quickly.

I know that others on TFL have made this loaf in the past and I'm just wondering if anyone who has specifically used freshly milled grain (as I think this mught be where the problem lies) has any suggestions or  thoughts on the process.

Lance