There was a farmer’s market in town today, and in addition to picking up some lettuce, tomatoes, and honey, Ivylad picked up some bread from a rather famous bakery around these parts that had a booth there.
I noticed they had the usual sourdough, the German rye, and the cranberry walnut breads, you know, all the lovely bakery breads you’re not going to find in the grocery store. I tend to like “stronger” breads, not the marshmallow-consistency flavorless white breads Ivylad favors for sandwiches. In fact, I picked up some Jewish rye for sandwiches, and I’m the only one who eats it.
But no pumpernickel. The man at the booth said they don’t make it. He said it takes three days to bake, and the markup is so high nobody buys it. Except for the little square slices they sell in delis to make tiny sandwiches, I haven’t seen a good, big loaf of pumpernickel in forever.
Is pumpernickel just too time-intensive for bakeries to make it? Or am I going to have to visit some kosher bakeries to find any?
According to my resident expert (Mr. Olive), authentic pumpernickle bread is made with rye meal, giving it a course texture, and is baked for a long time (16-24 hours) in a slow, steam-filled oven. The Malliard reaction is what gives the bread the dark color.
As a side note, The New High German word “Pumpen” was used to describe flatulence, and the course texture of the bread was prone to cause it in many people. The word “Nickel” was a form of the name “Nicholas”, often given to goblins, or the devil, or anything dark in nature. So, because of the effect of the bread had on many people, it was referred to as “Devil’s Fart”.
I’m Dutch, and my local baker sometimes has it. More expensive than normal bread, but probably not by much if you compare by weight (it’s much heavier than normal bread). I found a Dutch link saying that traditional Frisian roggebrood takes about 15-20 hours to bake (at 100 - 120 degrees centigrade) so I guess that that part of the story is true.
Anyway, over here any supermarket will have packets or plastic boxes of the stuff at about 70 eurocents for 500 grams. It keeps for ages when it’s unopened so they don’t have to sell that quick. In other words I think you’re mostly paying the price for liking something that’s not very popular in your region.
I call bullshit on this, particularly the “three days to bake”.
I used to bake all my own bread, and even developed some recipes of my own. Among others, I used to bake pumpernickel. Yes, you may need to adjust baking times, etc. but that’s true of a lot of the variety breads.
“Pure” pumpernickel, that is, the authentic old-style recipe with straight pumpernickel rye flour, is a bit rough for most people, but let’s be honest, almost no one in this country has ever tasted such. Much more common are “pumpernickels” that are at least part wheat flour, sometimes with colorants and other flavoring agents. Which is why I used a 50/50 split with rye and whole wheat, but there’s no reason you couldn’t up the rye percentage to your own taste. It makes a very, very dense bread which may account for those very small deli slices.