First Troy tells of his disastrous debut with his bread machine (hey Troy, did your new one arrive yet?).
Then, I watched the Word on the Street podcast from Sesame Street on pumpernickel bread (it’s a delightful podcast you’ll want to subscribe to – here you go, you can start now!).
Mmmm, pumpernickel. It’s that deep brown very fragrant bread made with caraway seeds. I haven’t had pumpernickel bread in years. I thought I’d once found pumpernickel bread here in Japan, but that was bread made with squid ink. Oops.
I’ve never made it. Off I go to my trusty cookbooks to find a recipe.
I don’t have a recipe for pumpernickel bread. How can this be?
Research time.
I discover that the orginal German style pumpernickel needs 16-24 hours to bake in order to achieve that deep brown color. 16-24 hours?? Who has that kind of time to leave an oven on for so long? Clearly not many US-based bakers, who apparently have twisted and altered the recipe enough to shorten the baking time and added enough ingredients such as coffee, cocoa and molasses to get that same brown color anyway.
Hm.
About the name: pumpernickel means Satan’s flatulence! Really. Some people have difficulty digesting the bread, which is where pumpen comes from. Nickel was a common name for devil. Say it with me: pumpernickel pumpernickel pumpernickel.
Anyways. Numerous sites give recipes for the US version of pumpernickel. I’m going to continue looking for a tradtional German version, because now I want to make pumpernickel bread.
Yum.
Filed under: Vegetarian Kids
