Rye bread subtypes

Can someone explain to me the difference between all the kinds of rye bread out there? I love rye bread, and I think I prefer seeded as opposed to unseeded. In the past couple of weeks I've purchased Jewish rye, Russian rye, and Caraway rye. As far as I can tell I may have purchased the same loaf of bread three straight times. What's up with that?

Grain threshold

I'm a fan of multigrain breads. For a long time I was impressed by eight or nine grain breads... they had good texture, the occasional surprise crunch, and like my fake-organic Fuji apples, they made me feel better about over-eating. In recent years bread makers managed to squeeze additional grains into their product, so when I left the East Coast I was accustomed to buying 12 or even 15-grain loaves. While I wouldn't say that 15-grain was twice as good as 8-grain, there definitely seemed to be a positive relationship between number of grains and flavor.

Well, that breaks down somewhere between 15 and 20 (see graph).



I was at the grocery store last week and I saw 20-grain bread. I was flabbergasted. Who knew there were even 20 grains to put into a bread? (Certainly not me.) Well, apparently the marginal 5 grains are derived from a rubber tree. Or the spandex plant. The 20-grain is easily the worst bread I've ever had. I would prefer a nice sourdough with a thin layer of mold to the 20-grain. Hopefully I can get some East Coast mid-teen-grain bread out here this weekend.