[Mike Nolan]

I think we're just going to have more chili tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

Looks like we wound up with close to 10 inches of snow, it is already compressing a bit due to the afternoon sun, I went down to the mailbox and the surface was crunchy.

[Mike Nolan]

The Westphalian pumpernickel bread has some big cracks in it, my guess is I didn't pack it tightly enough into the pan, it was pretty stiff. I've wrapped it in plastic and will let it age until Saturday afternoon. It is solid but it has a little give, so I don't think it's an inedible brick, but I'm worried it'll crumble when I try to cut it due to the cracks.

It smelled good coming out of the oven.

[Mike Nolan]

The complexity of the aromas from the Westphalian pumpernickel bread continues to evolve as it gets close to the final hour in the oven.

The dominant odor at the moment is one I'd associate with molasses.

[Mike Nolan]

This morning the aroma has more rye tones to it, but also a sweetness, I'm really hoping this loaf comes out as good as it smells. 3 more hours in the oven, and then waiting for it to cool and age for 2 days.

The weather bureau finally got one right, we've got a good 9 inches of snow on the back patio already, and it looks like we could get several more

We're staying home today.

Earlier I was looking at the bird feeder on a pole in the back yard, which we filled the other day. There was one rather large bird on it, probably the young Cooper's hawk we've seen several times. It sat there for several minutes, then flew off, and there have been a half-dozen or more birds at that feeder since, but they weren't getting close to that hawk!

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[Mike Nolan]

It's going to be a long wait to find out just how good it is. It probably wouldn't take well to being mailed, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I hope this bread tastes as interesting as it smells while baking, I'm getting an odor now that is almost fruity sweet.

[Mike Nolan]

Supper tonight is chili.

[Mike Nolan]

I did wind up doing the final kneading of the Westphalian pumpernickel dough in two parts, there was really a noticeable change in the dough's appearance and feel after 20 minutes of kneading with a paddle. (That's supposed to break up the coarse meal a bit.)

Ginsberg calls it a 'glutinous mass' and that's a pretty apt description.

It is in the oven, 40 minutes at 300 and then 24 hours at 220. Will it be a brick at that point? Some of the posts on this recipe at freshloaf are not very encouraging, but my dough seems to be consistent with his descriptions so far, though I did wind up adding extra water to the scald yesterday.

Update: It's been in the oven for about 3 1/2 hours, and I'm starting to get some interesting aromas from the kitchen, probably from the amylase activity and the Maillard reaction. I'm not sure if I would have associated the smell with rye bread if I didn't know what I was making.

[Mike Nolan]

I found a short video (18 seconds) that might be the spoof Aaron was referring to.

I'm about to go see what happens when I try to do the final dough stage of the Westphalian pumpernickel. (I've been involved in an issue for a client for most of the last 12 hours, I was up until 4 AM working on it.)

[Mike Nolan]

The scald looks really dry to me, and that's the only water in the dough, tomorrow I add more rye flour and salt. There's no yeast in this recipe, but it is supposed to be really dense, and sliced as thin as you can.

I made it with freshly ground rye berries using the coarsest setting I can get from my Nutrimill. It may not be as coarse as the recipe assumes, and that's why it still looks so dry to me, even though I added more water than the recipe called for.

I will not be surprised if I have to add more water tomorrow to get it to come together. Ginsberg says it should be a 'glutinous mass'.

[Mike Nolan]

If anything, the third rack should be hotter than the middle one, because heat rises. I know when I made my last batch of peanut butter cookies, I had 3 that didn't fit on the big sheet pan, so I baked them on the top shelf and they were done 3-4 minutes earlier.

2 minutes with a hand mixer is probably 3-4 minutes by hand. Maybe more mixing causes more of the baking soda to produce gas before it goes in the oven, reducing the amount of rise during baking?

I've not made a lot of oil cakes, though Texas Chocolate Sheet Cake, which uses butter, probably qualifies. I generally don't fill a baking pan more than 2/3 full of cake batter. (Or I put a jelly roll pan underneath it to catch spills, it's far easier to clean a pan than to clean the bottom of the oven.)

[Mike Nolan]

I think I'm going to make a small potatoes au gratin to go with tonight's ham and pineapple. I know what my wife will say: carbs, more carbs, and even more carbs!

[Mike Nolan]

I am starting on the Ginsberg Westphalian Pumpernickel recipe, using freshly ground coarse rye meal. Today I make the scald, tomorrow it goes in the oven for 24 hours, then it gets wrapped to age until Saturday.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm always happy to hear from Cass, directly or indirectly, and I can't fault Cass's chemical thoughts and recommendations, but they don't really explain why didn't overflow last time but did this time, unless I'm missing the significance of the changes you made since then.

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