Transcription
How's it going my right bikers? Welcome to yet another Ribery recipe. Today, we're finally making pumpernickels. Let's go to the kitchen. Check it out.
Baking Pumpernickel have been on my list for many years, but I always hesitated because the internet was full of various recipes using various ingredients, and I just couldn't tell which one was the real one. Of course, you already know that I don't care too much about sticking to tradition, but I wanted to make this one right.
I recently read through a book called "The Rye Baker." It is full of valuable rabbit-making information, and it also has plenty of great recipes. And one of the recipes at the very end of the book was this Pumpernickel. The short description of the recipe says that real pump and nickel should be made with only three ingredients: rye, salt, and water. And that immediately piqued my interest because I had never made an unleavened loaf of bread. The fact that the evolution Pumpernickel turned out to be as basic as this was very surprising to me, and that is, of course, in a good way. It is perhaps the most basic recipe possible, at least if we are talking about loaves of bread.
Besides the simplicity of the recipe, the main ingredient surprised me as well. It is not rye flour; it is cracked rye grain or rye meal. Flour is made from milling grains to a fine powder. Cracked rye is basically just broken-up rye grains, and that's why Pumpernickel used to be a proper all-day peasant bread. Peasants couldn't afford milled flour, so they had to use leftover cracked grains, and as we all know, peasant food from the old days is nowadays the best food you can get. And before anyone asks, no, you cannot replace cracked dry grains or rye meal with whole grain rye flour. I tried doing that on my first attempt, and I ended up with a brick, and that's not in a good way.
Okay, here's the equipment that we'll use. Find the largest bowl you have. Trust me, you'll need it. And of course, you'll need some scales for weighing and a dough scraper for mixing.
For baking, I'm going to use my USA Pan Pullman loaf tin. It is a 900-gram or two-pound tin. The dimensions of a Pullman loaf tin are bigger than on a regular two-pound loaf tin, but even so, this loaf will fit in a regular two-pound loaf tin, even though it will weigh more than four pounds, almost 2 kilos. This is perhaps the densest bread you'll ever make. And because it takes so long to bake, we must cover it well so it doesn't dry out. I will use the lid that comes with my tin, but you can certainly use a piece of parchment paper to cover the dough and then cover the tin with some foil. That will work just as well. If you are interested in the tin that I'm using, you can find it in my Amazon Shop link down below. So far, it is the best bread tin I've ever owned.
Here's a closer look at the cracked rye. The texture is quite coarse and irregular. When you use this, you know you're getting all the goodness from the grain, but it definitely does look like something you would find on the floor of the mill. The most delicious leftovers, I would say.
Okay, let's start making the bread. And all begins with a scald. In a large bowl, combine the salt, boiling water, and a portion of the cracked rye. The scald will soak the grains and help them absorb the water more effectively. There are two reasons why I'm adding salt to the scald. The first one is we're using all the water of the recipe in the scald, just makes more sense to dissolve the salt in this water. And secondly, my kitchen is pretty warm, and the scald is going to spend about 16 hours at room temperature. The salt will prevent any bacteria from spoiling the mix. So, combine all the ingredients. Grab your dough scraper, mix until the cracked rye is well hydrated, then cover it up. Leave it to set at room temperature for around 16 hours.
Once the time is up, we can mix the final dough. Use your dough scraper to break up the scald, fluff it up a bit, and then add the remaining cracked rye. And then mix until everything is well hydrated. And if the scraper is not doing the job, finish the mix by hand. And that is all there is to making this dough.
But while the recipe is extremely simple, it does take some time to make. Between scalding, baking, and maturing, you could spend 60 to almost 90 hours. The hands-on time is, of course, minimal. All we had to do is mix the dough a couple of times. You will spend no more than 5 minutes touching this dough. The rest is just a whole lot of waiting. But as we all know, good things come to those who wait. In the end, you'll get a delicious loaf of bread, and it will stay fresh for many, many days. So when you're making a gigantic loaf like this, you'll only need to bake once in a fortnight, right?
Once the dough is fully mixed, we can prepare the baking tin. Grease the inside with some oil. It'll help the loaf release from the tin once it's done baking. I'm not using butter this time. Between the long baking time and the expected shelf life, it could go rancid. So use some kind of vegetable oil like olive, avocado, sunflower, whatever. Just no animal products. You want to place dough in the tin in chunks, and every time you put a piece of dough in the tin, press it down. Really make it fit into all the corners. Squeeze it, smoosh it, make sure you don't leave any gaps. Once it's all packed in, smooth out the surface. Then finally, you can grab your dough scraper and tidy up the edges. I'm going to brush some olive oil on top of the loaf as well. It should keep it from drying a little bit and will help the parchment paper stick to the surface.
As I mentioned earlier, I will use the lid that came with my tin to cover this loaf, but I actually think that wrapping the tin and foil tightly would be better in this case. The lid leaves small open gaps. Foil could create a better seal and prevent steam from escaping. This is, after all, more of a steamed pudding than a bread. 100 degrees Celsius, I wouldn't call it baking.
Okay, let's get this thing in the oven. At this point, the oven is switched off. I'll only switch it on after placing the tin inside it. To 150 degrees Celsius, fan off, and that's 300 degrees Fahrenheit. We're going to leave the dough in the oven to warm up for one hour at this temperature. After the first hour, turn the temperature down to 105 degrees Celsius or 220 degrees Fahrenheit and bake the loaf for 23 more hours.
I was curious, so I pulled it out 12 hours later just to see what it looks like. My kitchen was already smelling amazing at this point, but when I opened up the tin, an awesome aroma hit my nose. And as we can see, the loaf is already getting pretty dark, but it's not quite done yet. So we're going to cover it up, leave it to bake for another 12 hours for a total of 24 hours of baking. I wonder what the electric bill for this bake will be.
Traditionally, breads like this are baked in a cooling oven. The loaves only placed in the oven only when the baker has finished baking all the other breads which require higher temperature. In a bakery, making bread like this is a means of saving energy or at least using it wisely. That is funny because when we make this type of bread at home, we are literally wasting energy. But to me, it's not really wasted. This bread is worth it.
Just look at this beauty. A perfectly square loaf of super dense rye bread with a beautiful dark color and an extremely rich aroma. The thing that it only took three ingredients to make seems kind of unreal. But we still need a bit of patience. Just because the loaf came out the oven doesn't mean it's ready. If you cut it now, your knife will get stuck in the loaf. It'll be so gummy. So we must leave it to cool down a good few hours, then wrap it up in cling film, and then leave it to mature for at least another 24 hours.
And here it is, 24 hours later. This loaf is dense and hearty, so you must slice as thin as you can. Eating a couple slices of this bread is almost like a full meal, and you should get about 30 slices from this loaf. So this loaf is enough for two weeks for one person. That is if you eat two slices per day, which is quite reasonable.
But if you think that you might get a little bit bored eating a bread made with just flour and water, now here's a solution for you. It's called bread spice, or in German, it is a mix of toasted and ground seeds, often used for flavoring rye breads. And we have made something similar at the beginning of the rye bread series. Today, I'll show you a classic mix made with aniseed, coriander seed, fennel seed, and caraway seed. The anise is quite fragrant and licoricey. Coriander has a citrusy taste. Fennel is quite sweet. Caraway is unique. It has a very astringent taste, but you can certainly use different seeds in your bread spice or just the proportions of seeds and recipe to suit your taste.
You will need something to grind the seeds with. A pestle and mortar will work great. A coffee grinder will also work. Before we grind the seeds, we need to toast them. That will bring out more flavor. Combine all the seeds in a pan, place the pan on high heat, and toast the seeds for around 3 minutes. Move them around occasionally so they don't burn on one side. Once they change color, they become nice and smoky and fragrant. They're ready. Pour them in your grinding device and grind them down to a fine powder. Although it doesn't have to be super fine, you can leave it more chunky for texture. The more finely you grind it, the more flavor you'll get out of them.
To use the bread spice, simply add it to the scald. The amounts of seeds given in the recipe will be enough to make enough bread spice for this loaf of Pumpernickel. When it comes to most other regular-sized breads, you'll be able to flavor two loaves of bread with this spice mix.
So what do you think this recipe? Have you ever baked Pumpernickel before? Let me know down in the comments. You want to see more of those like this one? Click over here. Subscribe to the channel. Click right here. That's all I have for you today. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you in the next one.