“A good, gutsy bread with a rather dense texture, this is not the easiest bread to put together…”
-James Beard, Beard on Bread
After all of my fried dough adventures last week, I wanted to get back to the basics and make a wholesome whole-grain loaf.
Here are the ingredients for Pumpernickel Bread II:
The container on the left is my rye flour. Interestingly, this pumpernickel recipe doesn’t contain any caraway seeds.
As Beard warned, the dough was very stiff and difficult to knead, more like a clay that a bread dough. After working it to the point where it seemed somewhat pliable, I formed it into a ball and let it rise in my warmed oven (I let my oven heat to the “warm” setting, turn it off, and then let my dough rise in the oven with the door closed. This leads to a faster rise when my house is cool during the winter).
After about an hour, my dough had already doubled in size. I shaped it into a loaf to fit my 8 x 4 pan, and put it back in the warmed oven to rise for another hour. My rising times (one hour per rising) were much quicker than the two to three hours specified in the recipe; possibly the warm oven trick led to a quicker rise.
After 35 minutes in the oven at 375 degrees, my loaf was nicely browned and hollow-sounding when thumped.
Pumpernickel Bread II is a incredibly dense, very moist bread with a hard crust and an intense rye flavor. Tonight, we just had a few slices of bread and salads for dinner. It doesn’t sound like much, but this bread eats like a meal. I asked Mike if he wanted a Pumpernickel Bread sandwich for lunch tomorrow, but he turned it down–he thought the bread was too heavy to make a sandwich out of. I don’t know that I would make this bread again. I don’t think I’m tough enough to handle it!
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