american pumpernickel

What the heck is pumpernickel anyway? Well, in Westphalia (Germany), it's an extremely dense, crustless bread, made with rye flour and cooked very slowly to achieve a deep brown color, sweet, dark chocolate, coffee flavor, and earthy aroma. Not bad...

In the US however, pumpernickel is an entirely different beast. Instead of relying on a slow baking process, American bakers add molasses, coffee, or cocoa to emulate the flavors of the original German bread. Wheat flour is also usually added to help provide additional lift. On its own, rye flour doesn't have that much gluten, so you have to add something to get create the gluten structure that results in a light crumb. By using wheat and all-purpose flour, and a faster cooking time, you get crusty, light loaf. Carraway seeds are also almost always added to pumpernickel bread in the US to give it a unique anise-like flavor.

With all do respects to the Germans, a light, crusty loaf sounds far more appealing to me. So that's what I set out to recreate today. The resulting loaf was pretty much exactly what I was after, even though I didn't use wheat flour. I did however use the now well known no-kneed recipe, my homemade sourdough starter, and a fair amount of all-purpose flour. The only thing I would do differently is lower the cooking temperature. At 500F the bottom of the loaf burned a little (because of the molasses).

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Tom's No-Kneed Pumpernickel Bread

Ingredients
100grams sourdough starter (or 1/4 teaspoon commercial yeast, and add 50g AP flour and 50g water)
15g salt
250g water
150g rye flour
200g AP flour (can replace with 100g AP and 100g Wheat Flour)
50g mollases
10g carraway seeds
10g cocoa powder

Directions
Stir all ingredients together until dough is "shaggy"
Let rest 12-16 hours at room temp, covered with kitchen towel
Pour dough out onto flowered surface and let rest 15 minutes
Shape into ball and place in very lightly oiled bowl for 2nd rise - 2hours
Preheat oven to 450F
Cook bread in covered Dutch Oven for 35 minutes (pyrex or cast iron dishes work as well)
Remove lid and finish cooking for 15-20 minutes