Thanks for reading, Brian! Dark rye flour can be a bit of a question mark in terms of quality. It sometimes refer to a whole grain rye flour, but can also be, as Jefrey Hamelman describes dark rye flour in Bread: "flour milled from the periphery of the grain, similar to the clear flour produced during the milling of wheat. It tends to be coarse and sandy, to absorb quite a lot of water, and in general is difficult to work with." If that's the type of flour you're working with you may well have to add extra water, and the bread may be more likely to crack on top during baking. This loaf tends to be rather dense anyway, so I wouldn't expect an open crumb structure. As far as the cooling time goes, rye breads tend to take longer for the internal crumb structure to set and can be moist and gummy if you cut into them too early. I would wait if you can, but it won't be the end of the world if you cut into this bread after a few hours.  

Barb

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