Artisan Lame Manufacturer Issues Recall Following Incident Involving Unintentional 45-Degree Grigne Deviation

The blade left the dough in the right place and the grigne came out wrong. Marisol Ibarra's batard, a 12.4% protein T65 at 72% hydration, bulked four and a half hours to a final dough temperature of 24.8°C, opened on a single ear running at an angle her bench notes have no column for.

"I scored it the way I score everything," Ibarra said. "The loaf disagreed."

The disagreement has a serial number. On 12 August 2026, Verrault & Sons filed recall notice 2026-LAME-041 covering 3,400 double-curved lames from batch L-77, in which the blade seat was milled with an unintended 45-degree roll. Every stroke through a scored batard from that batch lands the grigne at an angle the baker did not choose. The company called the defect "aesthetic-only" in a follow-up statement, a phrase that has calmed no one at the bench.

Affected bakers have organized around the orientation of the result rather than any failure in it. These batards browned evenly, sprang properly on the stone and kept three days. The complaint is direction.

Dorian Iverson of the standards board ruled within four days: a grigne deviating more than fifteen degrees from the axis of the loaf "cannot be entered in exhibition class." Iverson's office has issued procedural rulings on less than this, and issued this one faster.

Harold Nix, who has logged grigne angles at the Hollis Street judging table since 2019, puts the median deviation across 212 affected loaves at 43.6 degrees, against a long-run median of 6.2. He has filed the figures as civic infrastructure, which is how he files everything.

Not everyone shares the concern. Of eleven batards entered blind at the Lower Third bakers' table last Saturday, six cut with batch L-77 stock, five with clean, the panel named the deviant loaves correctly four times in eleven, which is what a coin does. "I've read the angle," said panel chair Priya Anand, "and I'd like it noted that I cannot taste it."

The argument is older than the batch. Section 4.2 of the 1998 Bakers' Standards Bulletin fixed the grigne "longitudinal to the loaf's axis" and left the tolerance unstated, and the trade has been running that gap ever since without reopening the file, which is why Iverson could rule without citing anything newer.

Verrault & Sons is shipping replacements and asking that affected lames be returned. Two bakers at the Lower Third table have asked, in writing, to keep theirs.