Pumpernickel: With a name like "devil's fart," who needs to make jokes?

So the etymology of the word "pumpernickel" isn't exactly as cut and dry as all that. The OED doesn't attribute any specific origin to this word, but it has several interesting stories about it. One origin of the word claims that as Napoleon was invading Germany, he was served dark rye bread. Disgusted with the thought of eating it, he exclaimed, "C'est pain pour Nicole!" (It's bread for Nicole!) Nicole, of course, being his horse.

In Germany, pumpernickel gets its color from a chemical reaction between amino acids and sugars, in the same way as sausages brown when they are heated. These breads bake for up to 24 hours in an oven at a very low temperature. In America, pumpernickel is baked for a much shorter period of time, instead getting its color from various coloring agents, either caramel coloring, cocoa, molasses or coffee.

The bread began with a starter of barm, pumpernickel flour and water. That sat out until it began to bubble, then took a nap in the fridge overnight. The next day, the starter was mixed with flour, sugar, cocoa, salt and yeast, as well as some bread crumbs from the rye bread I had made. This is a holdover from how the bread is made in villages in eastern Europe. At this point, a small amount of vegetable oil and water were added to finish off the dough.

Kneading this dough was exciting, because it smelled and looked just like chocolate ice cream. Unfortunately, I had a mishap with the amount of salt added, so it really didn't taste much like chocolate anymore... At this point, it was a pretty standard affair of allowing the bread to rest and double in size.

After the first rise, I made the dough into loaves and set them into loaf pans to rise again. At this point, another side effect of the excess salt manifested itself. You see, due to some sort of chemical reaction that I don't pretend to understand, salt kills yeast when they come into direct, concentrated contact with one another. So, at this point, the excess salt had pretty much taken all the oomph out of my yeast. As a result, my loaves ended up looking like...

Short, stumpy loaves. They looked like pumpkin rolls, actually, as you could still see how I had folded them up. The bumps across the surface are larger bits of the rye crumbs that didn't get chopped up quite as fine. As far as the look of the bread itself, it was really nice. It was the same color as the cocoa that I put in it, and managed to still smell like the cocoa as well.

I really hesitate to comment on the flavor of the bread, as it was most certainly not the way it was supposed to taste. I could definitely catch a number of different flavors, including a bit of the rye crumbs, the sourdough from the starter and a bit of something from the cocoa. This was all incredibly overpowered, however, by the salt. That being said, I'll have to just wait to form my opinion on how this bread tastes.

Until next time...

Pumpernickel? Eh... check?

Next up? Panettone.