February 19, 2002
Devil's Fart
At some point in my watching-too-much-Food-Network phase, I watched Emeril make a loaf of bread that was a swirl of rye and pumpernickel. It looked fantastic, and it looked easy.
I recently discovered that we had rye flour in our curiously stocked kitchen and decided it had to be put to good use. I couldn't find Emeril's recipe, but I googled for rye bread and came up with lots of options. I backed off the idea of marbling and just went for straight pumpernickel. I had to kluge together two recipes because the one I liked best was for a bread machine, and I haven't got one. So I used the ingredients from that one in the proportions from another and got to work.
Interesting pumpernickel facts:
* Pumpernickel bread is basically rye bread with molasses and coffee, unsweetened cocoa or something similar added to make it darker and give it a rich, bittersweet flavor.
* The Westphalia region of Germany is known for its pumpernickel bread.
* Early versions of the heavy bread were known to wreak havoc on the insides. Depending who you ask, the word "pumpernickel" translates from German as "devil's fart" or more delicately, "hard to digest".
Pumpernickel is supposed to be dense, but I think mine didn't rise enough. It rose a little, so I'm not sure what happened. Maybe my expectations were too high. Also, one of the yeast packets may have been dead from sitting in the trunk overnight in sub-zero weather. Not sure... I'll find out about that last part when I next make bread with the rest of the yeast from that batch.
I ended up with two small round loaves of extremely heavy, but otherwise pretty decent tasting bread. The imprecision of the recipe led me to go a little heavy on the cocoa and coffee. Not perfect, but it does clearly reflect pumpernickel, which is pretty cool for a first try and no real recipe.
Posted by buddha at February 19, 2002 03:08 AM
Comments
Wow. Handmade bread. I had no idea. Way cool.
Posted by: Jason at February 25, 2002 09:18 PM
I made a couple of loaves of French bread about a month ago, and those turned out near perfect. I was pretty proud. The pumpernickel was "a good effort." Maybe next time.
Posted by: Dan at February 26, 2002 01:22 AM
I love pumpernickel with raisins, which you can't seem to get around here. I gorge on the stuff whenever I visit New York.
Posted by: Troutgirl at February 26, 2002 03:25 PM