How to Make Pumpernickel Bread | Flour, Water, Salt, No Leavening

Baking pumpernickel had been on my projects list for years. I always hesitated because the internet was full of various recipes using many different methods, so it was hard to tell what is real and what isn’t. You know that I don’t care too much for sticking to tradition, but I wanted to make this one right.

Recently I read Stanley Ginsberg’s ‘The Rye Baker’, a book that every rye bread enthusiast should definitely consider reading. It’s not only full of valuable information regarding the principles of rye bread baking, but it also contains lots of rye bread recipes from all over the world. You can find it in my Amazon store.

Almost at the very end of the book is a recipe for Westphalian pumpernickel. The short description mentions that real pumpernickel must not contain anything else but rye, salt, and water. That immediately piqued my interest. I had never made an unleavened loaf of bread. And the fact that the ever-elusive pumpernickel had turned out to be as basic as this was quite surprising to me.

Another surprise was the rye required for the recipe. It is not rye flour, rather it is rye meal or cracked rye. Flour is milled fine while cracked rye is essentially just coarsely broken up rye grain.

On my first attempt I tried using wholegrain rye flour instead – it did not work at all. Get yourself a bag of cracked rye and all will be good. You’ll end up with an incredibly flavourful and extremely dense bread that will last weeks if you don’t devour it too quickly.

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[ChainBaker]

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[francesjackson]

Thank you for this most fascinating video. I'm in my 90s, and I've been baking bread for around 70 years, mostly using my grandmother's method. She made white bread, and my mother did also. I grew up loving yeast dough, its smell and feel, everything about it. But it's only since I found your channel that my rye curiosity was piqued, and I've been playing with rye doughs now for a couple of years. Always wondered about pumpernickel, and I'm grateful to you for explaining it so beautifully. I can't wait to find some cracked rye and give this a try. I love your channel, and it keeps me busy, and possibly out of mischief.

[dfertefwergwergrfgwr]

Finally I found somone who explained the difference between flour and meal !

[Jeepy-LoveToBake]

The culmination of the Rye Series - whoo hoo! I am so excited to try this recipe. I have dark rye flour and pumpernickel flour, but sadly, no "Cracked Rye" flour. I must shop for that now and then make a baking schedule for this wonderful recipe. The bread spice sounds lovely and I'm sure the aroma while baking will be heavenly. Thank you for all your efforts to create this recipe and video.

Hey everyone, now at 179K subscribers. Let's all help Charlie reach 200K by the end of the year 👍 - share your bakes and Charlie's YT channel with your friends, family and colleagues!

[t-w-n]

Pro tip for energy saving: Coordinate with multiple people who want similar bread and bake at least 10kg at once. That will slow the warmup process of the oven by at least an hour, so you can't do it when baking wheat or spelt breads, but slow-baked dense rye loaves won't care. Also, if your baking tins seal the steam in tightly enough, you can bake in the winter and turn your radiators off, while using a fan to push the warm kitchen air into the living room/office or taking the laptop into the kitchen for home office work: I actually spend way less money baking rye bread than buying it and leaving the radiators on ;)

Also, props to you for the pronunciation of the german ü, neither english nor any slavic language makes that any easier!

[dfertefwergwergrfgwr]

I bought this wonderful book a year or so ago. This was the first bread I made. I like rye bread but absolutely love toasted rye bread.

[christelchristely]

Best to make it in a jar. After baking at 150c without the lid, let cool to 100c, close the lid, then put it in a waterbath and can it the rest of the time. It will last into the next century.

[anglerroy]

Thank you for this. Excellent; very well done.

[peterhaas]

I wanted to bake an original three-ingredient-only Pumpernickel for a long time but did not not find a receipe anywhere until I found your channel. I followed your receipe to the letter and the result was fantastic. My loaf was evenly coloured, dark brown and moist, and tasted great. Thank you for this wonderful receipe!

[rickperez]

Just placed my order for the cracked rye. My wife might kill me when i tell her it takes 24 hours to bake.

I'm probably going to make at least two loaves. Gonna play a bit with the second. Starting with some cocoa powder.

Thanks for this series. It's been amazing.

[sheilam]

This sounds and looks very intriguing and delicious. Definitely worth making. Thx for doing this and sharing. 👍👍👍👍👍

[JasonwithaJay]

I love pumpernickel. I've never seen it made before. I want to try this.

[Livllov]

My mouth is watering… cream cheese, pumpernickel and olives is one of my favorite kinds of sandwiches…

[OliverKlimek]

It's really refreshing to see a non-German making proper pumperickel and not some bastardised dark brown bread. Even some German bakers use sourdough and colorants in theirs, but it's not the real thing. Good German pumpernickel also uses a mix of coarse and fine cracked rye, but I can imagine the coarse variety similar to steel cut oats may be hard to find outside Germany. And one more small thing: Please don't use olive oil for this bread. As you say, it's peasant food, and there are no olives in Germany. Simply use plain boring vegetable oil so you won't have a clash of flavours.

[wilhelmseleorningcniht]

Interestingly enough, pumpernickel in Pennsylvania Dutch, name notwithstanding we come from German speaking Europe originally, which is called Bumpernickel is a bit different.
Traditionally the bread called such was a bread which was colored and slightly sweetened with molasses usually shaped into very large round loaves (back when clay and brick ovens were used they were typically as big as could fit through the oven's mouth, which could be quite wide) that were made of a relatively coarse unbolted rye flour.
Not cracked rye like you've used but similar in that it was coarsely ground and not bolted/sifted so as to merely render it useable, not worth the expense of more thorough grinding and sifting which'd be reserved for the spelt harvest.
This sort of flour was one of the main staple of Pa Dutch tables really until the early to mid 20th century, when corn and potatoes began to dominate the old rye breads (basically when people began to move into cities the old bake ovens weren't used as much and rye in general was grown less in order to grow things that'd better cater to Anglophone appetites).
Typically some wheat would be added as per other rye breads, though it was typically around 2/3's rye to 1/3 wheat if there was even that much wheat added. Just enough for some gluten basically (and note that spelt typically has higher gluten contents than other forms of wheat which could play into particularly high rye ratios).
This Bumpernickel is potentially one of the main sources for American style Pumpernickel which is of course known for being much different to the traditional German Pumpernickel you show here in the video.

Found this recipe, taken from the Schwenkfelder (historical society)'s facebook page.
“Bucks County” hearth baked rye bread (As made by Aunt Sarah [Landis])
1 quart sweet milk (scalded and cooled)
1 tablespoonful lard or butter
2 tablespoonsful sugar
½ tablespoonful salt
1 cup wheat flour
3 quarts rye flour (this includes the 1 cup of wheat flour)
1 cup of potato yeast
Pour 1 quart of lukewarm milk in a bowl holding 7 quarts. Add butter, sugar and salt, 1½ quarts of rye flour and 1 cup of yeast. Beat thoroughly, cover with cloth, and set in a warm place to rise about three hours, or until it almost reaches the top of the bowl. When light stir in the remaining 1½ quarts of rye flour, in which one cup of wheat flour is included; turn out on a well floured bake board and knead about twenty minutes. Shape dough into one high, round loaf, sprinkle flour liberally over top and sides of loaf, and place carefully into the clean bowl on top of a well floured cloth. Cover and set to rise about one hour, when it should be light and risen to the top of the bowl. Turn the bowl containing the loaf carefully upside down on the [oven peel]. Remove cloth from dough carefully after it has been removed from bowl and place . . . loaf immediately in the hot oven, as it will rise immediately and not spread. Bake at least sixty minutes. When baked and still hot, brush the top of loaf with butter and wash the bottom of the loaf with a cloth wrung out of cold water to soften the lower hard baked crust. Wrap in a damp cloth and stand aside to cool where the air will circulate around it.

To make Yeast
Take a handfull of hops, 4 or 5 Potatoes, boil them together, mash the Potatoes right fine, and strain them, 2 table spoons of molasses, a tea spoon of Ginger, and a little flour in it; and set it in a warm place to work. Every now and then boil a few hops and take a lump of leven [yeast] and a little salt, and stir in and that will preserve it.

[if you wish to recreate this recipe, once the strained mixture has cooled to 85 F add two packets of yeast and let the culture grow over night in a warm place. Hops are not necessary but add flavor. ]

Has some interesting points like for example the use of hops. That's fairly common though the ginger here is not. Oddly I've not found too much use of carraway in traditional Pa Dutch bread baking with rye, so far anyways, though they undoubtedly did use it as I know it was once commonly grown in gardens. It wouldn't surprise me if the coarse flour and lack of carraway was part of why it was called Bumpernickel in the first place lol (the etymology of pumpernickel comes from a dialectal word Pumper meaning fart which carraway has often traditionally been seen as preventing in rye breads)

[thomassalvi]

This is the best/truest recipe….but I add maple syrup or molasses to make it mildly sweet. So glad you posted this. The other legit Pumpernickel YouTube recipes like this are in German. Westphalian Pumpernickel is this recipe - Münster Germany from the 1400s. Vegetable oil would be more authentic as Germany doesn’t grow olives - that would be an import.

[LiebeGruesse]

Most internet recipes and even most German bakeries do this with sourdough, some even using yeast. 5:54 So glad at least you know that it doesn’t need any of these. ❤

Legally though, you are allowed to use sourdough (yes, there is a law regulating it!). Even artificial souring, only 2/3 of the acid must come from sourdough. Experts know: Pumpernickel is not soured at all. Just slightly malted when watering and slowly warming the grains. 😂 Greets from Switzerland

[wazibiry]

I didn't know there was that much work on making this delicious bread 😋

[Grimreaper]

Thanks for the video I bake a lot of breads for the winter this will and some variety

[pd]

I grease all my USA Pullman loaf tins with lard. Lard lasts about 4 to 6 months at room temperature. I think that is enough time to handle any pumpernickel dough. They sell lard here unrefrigerated, right out on the store shelves in the open.