Several excellent recipes for rye breads have appeared on this list over
the years including Rose Levy Beranbaum's Jewish Rye and a sour rye posted
a few weeks ago by Fred Smith (v104.n009). These two make for an
interesting comparison between a sour and non-sour rye with similar
ingredients. I have been looking for a "historically informed"
pumpernickel recipe for several years. The only one I have found that
seems authentic is on Samartha Deva's site
http://samartha.net/SD/procedures/PPN01/index.html
This recipe actually uses old stale pumpernickel crumbs in the dough to
help give the bread a lighter texture. (I thought bread bakers used to go
to jail for adding stale bread to dough.) Samartha's recipe is an attempt
to recreate a pumpernickel from a modern German bakery. Whether it is
historically accurate is not clear. Baking for 24 hours in a water bath
makes me think that it is rather modern. I made this bread with a whole
wheat sourdough starter converted to a rye starter by refreshing it in rye
a few times and it worked out great. The first try was a bit mushy but by
the second try the texture lightened up and the rye slices were great for
open-face pastrami sandwiches. (This bread is too crumbly to make a
handheld sandwich.) Put a slab of the rye under a slice of pot roast or
meat loaf smothered in gravy.
I do have a question that the experts here might be able to answer. There
is obviously no organization to police bread names (except in France) so
anybody can call any bread by any name. Modern recipes for pumpernickels
should more properly be called "espresso" bread or "cocoa" bread or
"chocolate" bread for all the food coloring ingredients that get
added. What I would like to know is: What makes a Jewish Rye bread
different from a Rye bread and how are they each different from a
pumpernickel? Is a Jewish Rye simply a rye bread using Kosher
ingredients? I used to think that a pumpernickel had a sweetener of some
kind (like barley malt syrup or molasses) but I see those in rye bread
recipes also. If anyone has a reference to a historically-correct
pumpernickel please post it.
Thank you
Werner