Good old fashioned Pumpernickel bread :)

Yea ok.. I really don't know if its old fashioned or not. All i know is that I have never tasted it or seen it before.  :)  BUT,  it's name is pretty fun to say three times in a row real fast :)  

I made the loaf in the middle. Now let us ask ourselves this.....do these babies look like footballs to you?  Absolutely not! That  means we shaped them wrong :( Yup, wrong, wrong wrong. And how do I plan on correcting this problem you may ask?  The dollar Store, as I stroll over to purchase their $1 play dough. That's right. I am going to practice rolling this BATARD over and over and over again until I get it just right.  And lets take another quick glance at my bread and look at my scoring... uh huh..do those look like scoring to you or just 3 big blow out holes?  Exactly!! I need to practice scoring too!! Now, now. I am not being hard on myself as most of you are thinking right now. I am just being honest! Don't roll your eyes at me Cindy... Ginnette. I see you! ;)

All silliness aside, this was a cool project. We were able to work together with another group. One of us made the Rye Pumpernickel bread with caramel as an ingredient and the other group made it without. My group made the one with caramel which gives the bread that rich brown in color. The recipe made 8 loaves so they kindly forked over 4 of their dough balls and we did the same. :)  When it was time to roll out the dough and form the shape of the batard, we placed one dough on top of the other in order to create a swirl effect inside.  This is what it looked like prior to starting the roll out and shaping:

Pumpernickel bread is made with a dark rye which means it is richer in earthly flavors and heavier than white or medium rye. You can see in the below cuts, that the Pumpernickel has whole grains in it. You don't want to over mix this dough so you don't break those up. Ok, I take it back. You cant see the whole grains in the picture! Laughing... well what can I say? I tried. You can take my word for it that the whole grains are in there though! :)

This type of sourdough bread requires a Rye Starter. We created that yesterday and let it ferment over night.  Our Whole Wheat Bread that we are making tomorrow also requires the Rye Starter so more was created today. I know what you are asking. What is the purpose of a Starter, and in this case, the Rye Starter? Let me give you a quick history lesson! laughing... yea right, as if I had that much knowledge. Let me tell you what the Chef told us. :)  Before yeast was available, bread was started by mixing flour and water together and letting it stand until wild yeast began to ferment it. It was then used to leaven the bread.  Since we are not in the cavemen era any longer ( thank GOODNESS!!) we now create the starter ourselves and  use it to leaven our bread. I hope that helped to clear it up. I know it helped me! :-) I hope I don't miss that question on the test ;).

So there you have it. Pumpernickel in all its greatness. I hope your week is starting out lovely. I will catch you back here tomorrow!

Enjoy your evening everyone.