Report on Jewish Bakery Pumpernickel (Ginsberg pps 93-96):
This is a really good pumpernickel bread, but I did fiddle with the recipe a little. It produced two loaves about 650 grams each from (730 grams pre-baking weight), the loaves are about 10 inches x 5 inches by 2 1/2 inches.
Both of the sponge stages call for coarse rye meal, and the coarse rye meal I have is almost like cracked grain, which I thought might be too coarse to be the only rye in the recipe, so I used coarse rye meal for the first sponge and medium rye meal for the second.
I used first clear flour in the final dough, and I added about a tablespoon of caraway seed.
It uses some caramel color to produce a darker loaf.
I also used an egg wash rather than a cornstarch glaze, because cornstarch glaze always seems to produce a white pasty exterior, and this produced a nice shiny one.
It produces a fairly stiff dough, but it mixes well and it rose decently. I did let the final rise go for about 90 minutes as opposed to the 45 minutes in the recipe. Actual baking time was in the middle of the range in the recipe, by which point the internal temperature was about 206.
It slices easily and has a good internal crumb.
We used this bread for a batch of Reubens, and they were great. It was also pretty good with just little butter on it.
It also passes the toast test with flying colors.
This recipe is a real keeper, I'm sure I'll be making it again--soon!
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