Rye rye harvesting was a manual task performed with scythes or sickles. The cut rye was often shocked for drying or storage, and the threshing was done by manually beating the seed heads against a floor or other object. Like wheat, barley, and their hybrids and derivatives, rye contains gluten, which makes it an unsuitable grain for consumption by people with gluten-related disorders, such as celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and wheat allergy, among others. Nevertheless, some wheat allergy patients can tolerate rye or barley. Ergotism is an illness that can result from eating rye and other grains infected by ergot
Rye bread upon this mixing of grains. Use of high-gluten wheat flour also makes possible multigrain breads, such as the "rye and Indian" bread of the American colonies, which combined rye and wheat with cornmeal in one loaf. Rye bread contains phenolic acids and ferulic acid dehydrodimers. Pure rye bread contains only rye flour, without any wheat. German-style pumpernickel, a dark, dense, and close-textured loaf, is made from crushed or ground whole rye grains, usually without wheat flour, baked for long periods at low temperature in a covered tin. Rye and wheat flours are often used to produce a rye bread with