Pumpernickel troubleshooting
This is my third attempt at pumpernickel and, while more edible than its predecessors, it's still coming out very badly. Initially, my main issue was just a temperature problem with the oven, but now that that's resolved, it's clear that I have a different problem.
The dough was 100% hydration and contained nothing but coarse rye flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter. I baked it in a pullman pan at 325 °F for one hour, then at 212 °F for another 12 hours. As you can see, it's crusty on the outside but almost raw on the inside. I really can't understand how people achieve the desired texture, which is more or less homogeneous all the way through and practically crustless.
I've been starting the bake at 325 °F per this recipe, but I'm beginning to think that it's nonsense and that the bread should just go in at 212 °F for the entire bake. I thought that using a pullman pan would be sufficient for keeping the bread moist, but that might also be the wrong approach. Is it necessary to bake in a water bath? (This attempt was also over-fermented, but that's an easy fix, and I think not my main issue.)
I'd appreciate any pointers!
You're following the recipe correctly? The ingredients and instructions do differ from yours....
Ingredients1 kg medium organic rye meal (it is best to grind it fresh yourself or have it ground)
50g Wholemeal crumbs, coarse rye meal or old leftover pumpernickel
50g ready-made sourdough (prepared yourself or from the bag)
900ml water
20g salt
MethodPut the rye meal and the crumbs (or coarse meal ) with the sourdough , water and salt in a bowl, mix and knead into a dough with the dough hook of the hand mixer or the food processor for about 25 minutes. Cover and let the dough rise at room temperature for 45-60 minutes.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 165°. Pour water into a high-sided tin. Place the risen dough in a floured bread pan and place on the tray with water. Put the tray in the hot oven (middle) and bake the pumpernickel for about 24 hours . The temperature of the oven after about an hour. down to 100°.
Take the pumpernickel out of the oven, let it cool down a bit and carefully turn it out of the mold.
After initial failures, I began to experiment with changes to the recipe (generally based on similar recipes). My baking temperatures in particular are from the linked recipe.
Would you please explain the reason for 25 minutes of mixing when there is little or no gluten to develop? "The Rye Baker" suggests mixing a 42% pumpernickel/58% first clear for 6-8 minutes.
Thanks
However, I was just asking if they followed the recipe which asks for 25 minutes mixing. As to why, i'm not sure.
https://www.innungsbaecker.de/westfaelischer-pumpernickel
Chrome should give you an option to translate the page.
There is no gluten to develop, but the rye meal(s) and Altbrot will develop more gel on prolonged mixing. I have seen this instruction in other German or Austrian recipes.
One recipe in particular is the Schwarzer Muckel on Dietmar Kappl's homebaking.at blog. I tried this recipe with hand mixing but couldn't manage the full mixing periods. I ended up with a similar loaf as the one here, although not as gummy, but it was still mostly inedible.
Ginsberg also has some recipes with Roggenschot grob where he specifies a long mixing period to break down the meal.
If that's the case, could be the cause of your problems.
Also, 100% hydration seems too high.
Yippee
Hydration at 100% would translate to 1100g of water, not the 900g mentioned in the recipe. I don't know if you added too much water or simply mis-typed the hydration percentage.
How long had the bread been out of the oven when you cut it? For dense rye breads like pumpernickel, it is advisable to let them go 24-48 hours after baking before cutting them. This allows drier portions of the crumb to absorb moisture from wetter portions of the crumb, making for a more even consistency across the loaf.
Definitely agree with your assessment that the loaf was over-fermented. That also contributes to the structure shown in the photo. As the gel matrix in the rye paste breaks down, it can no longer retain the gases produced by fermentation. The resulting collapse creates an even denser blob of unaerated paste. It is harder to bake the moisture out of that extra-dense paste than it is to bake the water out of a well-aerated paste.
Note that the temperatures Abe mentions are C, not F.
Paul
I should have clarified in my initial post, I've continued to use the baking temperatures specified in the original recipe, but have attempted to troubleshoot it by making changes based on similar recipes.
I let the bread rest for a full 24 hours before cutting. Given how hard the outer crust is, I have a hard time believing that any waiting period would allow for good equalization of moisture, but I can definitely leave it longer next time.
The recipe as written seemed perfectly reasonable to me, but it simply wasn't working — I was basically getting charcoal. Do you have a different recipe you would recommend?
I brush the loaf with boiling water after it comes out of the oven, then let the loaf cool to room temperature under a towel. After the bread is cooled, then I place it in a plastic bag and leave it alone for a day or two. This softens the crust from armor plate to merely chewy.
Paul
When I first started baking I had the hardest time getting rye breads of any type, but especially 100% rye, to come out decently. I was coming from making exclusively wheat loaves, and wheat behaves very differently from rye. You don’t describe your method, but judging from the photo I would say the crumb in your bread looks gummy. If so, that is a very good clue that your dough may be overfermented, or at least that was the case for me. With this type of bread, the final proof needs to be watched carefully and placed in the over as soon as the first pinholes appear on the surface. This assumes that you have confidence in the activity of your starter.
Another possibility may be that the dough is not acidic enough, which causes degradation over time. You can search this and other forums for “starch attack.” 5% starter in the final dough seems pretty low to get decent acidity, but you don’t indicate how long you proofed it.
-Brad
I've been believing that my main issue is some combination of temperature control and baking pan / water bath problems, but it sounds like it's really an overfermentation issue. On the other hand, my earlier attempts were fermented for significantly less time and still ended up with gummy insides. This time I proofed the dough for about 18 hours and it roughly doubled.
I'm confident in my starter since it raises wheat bread with no issue, but I'm a fish out of water with rye. Could you recommend a method for the baking phase itself? In particular, do you heat the oven to 212 °F right from the start, or do you start it hotter? Also, do you use a pullman pan, the "cans in a dutch oven" method, or something else?
18 hours seems like a long time to proof, but I have no experience with 5% starter. My typical rye will use 10-20% mature rye starter and my proof time will be around 1.5-2 hours. Fermentation is not a linear process so that does not mean that 4x time is needed for ¼ the starter amount, but I'm betting that 18 hours is way too long. Ryes, in my experience, need to rise around 30-40% for the final proof, not 100%. I don't use a dutch oven. If I use a pullman pan it is usually uncovered, so it behaves like a loaf pan. I also make free-standing loaves.
Also I've never baked low-temp + long time. Historically ryes were baked at the end of a long day without adding any more fuel to the fire. With the receding temperatures a longer time was needed so bakers left the loaves in the oven overnight. That's where the 12 hours comes from, I believe. We don't necessarily have to follow the same procedure with modern ovens, but I don't know what the effects on taste or texture might be for the long bake. I will usually heat the oven to 450˚F and drop it down to 300-350˚F or maybe even lower after a period of time. After baking it is sometimes brushed with water after cooling and wrapped in linen for 24-48 hours.
-Brad
Here's a recipe from another reliable source and the related video for your reference.
Yippee
This page is a goldmine.
I learned how to make good rye bread from this baker.
Yippee
I recently made a Westfälischer Pumpernickel but the recipe was slightly different from this one. It was similar to Lutz Geißler's Hütten-Pupernickel (link). Here are my observations from what I learned on that bake.
Good luck!
Using a roasting bag is a great suggestion. I've seen it mentioned a few times now, so I'll definitely use one for the next try.
I did mix for a full 25 minutes using a stand mixer. I've also seen some recipes call for scalding the rye meal and then leaving it to soak for a long period. I'm under the impression that rye doesn't really autolyse like wheat does, so I'm unsure what that resting period is supposed to accomplish. Do you have any thoughts on that method?
Thanks for the pinhole tip! That's apparently the cue I was missing.
I'm no expert, so I will let Stanley Ginsberg explain it:
http://theryebaker.com/on-scalds-and-scalding/
While you're there, you should check out his recipes and his info on all things rye. I also have his book The Rye Baker.
Also, cracking is another signal that is often used for bake readiness of rye dough .
100C is the boiling point for water. Let's assume that most ovens are not precision instruments, and the temperature wanders near the setpoint. Some ovens might wander cooler, some warmer. If your oven wanders a bit lower than 100C, you are not driving off the water at any appreciable rate. In the meat smoking world, you are perpetually in the "stall" - the phase change period where water is vaporizing. The water at 100C (if all is going well) is not being converted to steam and the dough is rather stewing in its own juices.
The message here is that 100C is a very low baking temperature under the best of conditions. Actual conditions may have been worse, resulting in chocolate pudding as the photo shows.
What is your experience level with baking? 100% hydration and schwarzbrot/rugbrød as you are baking are two distinct and individual challenges. And you have combined these two advanced concepts into one bake.
Try backing up and gaining confidence and success with easier breads. Try a 67% hydration bread with all purpose unbleached white flour. Then go from there.
Plenty of experience with wheat breads, 100% hydration, yeasted/sourdough, whatever. Backing up to low hydration AP bread isn't going to give me any more experience working with rye. Believe it or not, I'm also familiar with the boiling point of water, but you make a good point about the importance of temperature control. In fact, my first attempt was completely derailed by the oven running hotter than its nominal setting, which I've now corrected using an oven thermometer.
Do you have any suggestions related to the actual recipe? For example, what do you consider a 'typical' hydration for pumpernickel (online recipes vary wildly on this point despite having similar baking times)?
~80s
Yippee
I don't have suggestions on this recipe. I prefer the straight dough method and don't generally retard unless it is with a well-known to me recipe.
I would search for German language or Danish language recipes. The bread it appears you wish to make seems to stem from Danish rugbrød, and I would follow the Danish tradition here, rather than the German one.
that the rye was fermented to the point of breaking down as Paul has pointed out. The matrix just couldn't hold any gasses. What did you do with the rye fudge afterwards? Mix it with chocolate and nuts? Roll little globs in sprinkles?
5% rye starter is the problem. The dough needs more culture in it if the desire is for increased volume. Think of the matrix falling apart at say somewhere around 8 hours. Retards are deadly and unpredictable. I have seen one recipe where a retard works. My advice, wait on that one until later. :)
Your rye will vary but once the rye flour gets wet, you got 8 hours to get it into the oven. Chances are good, your rye flour will not wait that long. The idea with 100% rye is that one adds enough sourdough culture or yeast and bacteria to get the lift you want before it self destructs. Use too much lift or power and the rye dough tears apart too. A slow steady warm stretch. Pumpernickel is not known for height so fermenting for sour does not require much increase in volume. Aroma and taste are better guides. Stop thinking fluffy wheat bread. :)
There are exceptions to the 5 to 8 hour limit and you can lengthen the play time with your dough by adding fresh flour. I think to expect any rise from the recipe and to raise volume more than 20% in one shot with 5% sourdough starter under 8 hours is asking too much from the dough. The character of Pumpernickel is compact and dense.
Here is a link to ChainBaker https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBlr_EA0gvw&t=1s
I have made this recipe several times. I wait the full 48 hours before slicing. I also add the bread spices.
THIS is extremely easy. Hands on from cracking the rye berries in a blender to slicing the loaf is about 20 minutes. The rest of the time is waiting.
I would imagine you have already remedied your situation by now, but just in case.
I've been trying this recipe.
https://www.thebreadshebakes.com/2014/08/baking-traditional-real-german-pumpernickel-bread/