Greenstein's Pumpernickel Bread

Happy blogoversary! As I mentioned yesterday in my post, today is the birthday of this blog. It was only two years ago that I sat in my room in the dorms in Bar Ilan and decided to create this site, a place to share my love of all things baking. Many pounds of flour, sugar, margarine and eggs and a couple of hundred posts later, this blog is still going strong. To mark this anniversary, I thought it fitting to tell you about a bread that I made a bit ago but have not told you about. As the blog's name indicates, bread is the thing that I love to make most (dont worry, there is much love for everything else!) and the thing that I get most satisfaction from. So I bring to you this Pumpernickel Bread that I have adapted (out of necessity) from George Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker. I had recently raised starter and acquired rye flour, so it seemed the perfect opportunity to make this. The changes I made were as follows: I omitted the altus, as I had no other rye bread laying around, I used 1 tbsp cocoa powder instead of the caramel color, omitted the caraway seeds, both because I didnt have any around and because I wanted the unadulterated rye flavor to come through. In addition, I used regular all purpose flour instead of the first clear flour and omitted the cornstarch glaze out of sheer laziness. The bread is probably unrecognizable from the original but it was no less enjoyed. I ended up making one loaf and two rolls. The dough was easy to make and rose beautifully. Perhaps because my starter wasnt mature enough, the sourdough flavor was not evident at all. Nice and chewy, it still made an excellent accompaniment to tuna fish and eggplant spread. This is definitely an easy recipe worth repeating once my starter has acquired more mature flavor. It just struck me to use the rest of this bread that is leftover in the freezer to use as altus for another experiment..... Stay tuned!

Pumpernickel Bread

original recipe from Secrets of a Jewish Baker

1 cup warm water

2 1/4 tsp instant yeast

1 cup rye sour

1 cup altus

4 tbsp pumpernickel color

2 1/2 -3 1/2 cups first clear flour

1 cup rye flour

1 tbsp salt

1 tbsp caraway seeds

Place all of the dry ingredients in a bowl,
and stir until smooth.
Add the flours and seeds,
and stir with your hands or a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until a smooth dough is formed.
Place in a greased bowl and allow to rise until doubled in volume.
Shape the dough into two loaves- or as I did, one loaf and two small rolls.
Set aside to proof until doubled in size. Towards the end of proofing, preheat the oven to 375.
Slash your loaf/loaves.
Bake until a thermometer registers 190-200 degrees on a thermometer, around 30-40 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!