the grind's the thing

So there's this deli rye I bake regularly (a 45% rye spin on Ilya Flyamer's fantastic formula.) It's always been super tasty & dependable. And it was very flexible, working just as well if I let the levain sit for 8 hours or 18.

But, since the start of the year, I began to have problems with it: the dough suddenly got way stickier and harder to manage. It felt seriously over-hydrated -- though the hydration remained stable at about 70%. It also started to ferment much, much quicker. Oven spring declined. My crusts got thicker and tougher and had less of a caramelized quality. And the loaves felt heavy when I pulled them from the oven.

The bread still tasted quite good. But it wasn't as good as it had been.

The flours were the same brands. The water came from the same tap. The temperature and humidity were roughly the same. The oven hasn't changed. Nor the dutch ovens. The process was the same, too. I played around with dropping the percentage of rye flour from 45% to 40% and dropping the amount of water -- but the dough was still super-sticky. Two weeks ago, I found I could hardly shape it because it oozed all over the place once I removed my hands, no matter how much stitching I tried to do.

Last week, I realized that there was one thing that seemed to have changed -- but it was so subtle I thought I might have been imagining it. The whole rye flour I use seemed quite a bit finer than it used to be. So I emailed Farmer Ground Flour. And they responded that, yes, I could very well be seeing a difference. It wasn't deliberate, but different local ryes take to grinding different ways. What's more, they brought a new stone into use in their mill in 2023 -- and though it hasn't yet been used for rye, it could have meant that the older stones had maintained a finer grind for rye.

This sparked a theory: I read in one of dabrownman's posts from a few years back that a fine grind can damage rye's starch granules, making it easier to break down the starches into sugars and tending to cut the protein bonds in gluten. Essentially, I posited, the finer grind had led my dough to have a kind-of amylase attack, causing it to lose structure.

So I made a new loaf, being careful not to let the preferment sit more than 8 hours and keeping the bulk & proof on the short side. And it worked: the dough was no longer super sticky, I could shape it quite easily, and the final bread had a thin, crunchy crust and felt light in my hands when I pulled it from the oven this morning.

The grind changed -- and I had to learn how to change with it.

Rob