Pumpernickel Bread
Description
A little bit of added rice flour dusted onto your work surface will make the somewhat sticky dough a bit easier to shape, before you place it in the prepared bread baking pan.
Ingredients
Instructions
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Line one small bread baking pan with parchment paper, while allowing the parchment paper to come up over the longer-ended sides of the pan.
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Butter the remaining exposed pan surfaces on the shorter ends that might come into contact with the bread dough as it bakes.
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Set the prepared bread baking pan aside for later.
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Combine the 100 grams of gluten-free buckwheat flour with the 350 grams of gluten-free flour mix, and add the 200 grams of warm water.
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Stir to roughly mix.
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Add the sunflower seed oil, softened unsalted butter, cocoa powder, molasses, brown sugar, and dry yeast, and mix with a spoon until roughly combined.
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Blend in a stand mixer using the dough hook attachment until the mixture is homogenous.
You can also mix by hand--whatever you prefer! -
Add in the whole egg, and continue to mix for another 90 seconds, or until the whole egg is fully incorporated into the dough.
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Sprinkle in the Kosher salt, in addition to the whole caraway seeds, and mix until the caraway seeds are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
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Preheat your oven to 350˚F.
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Sprinkle roughly one or two Tablespoons of rice flour onto a clean working surface.
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Turn the mixed dough out onto your lightly-floured working surface, and gently shape the loaf into the shape of your prepared bread baking pan.
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Gently transfer the formed dough into the bread baking pan, and cover with plastic wrap.
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Allow the dough to rise for roughly one hour, or until the dough has risen to the nearly the top of your bread baking pan.
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Once your loaf has rested and risen, remove the plastic wrap.
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Bake the loaf at 350˚F for roughly 40 minutes, or until the bread is fully cooked through.
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Remove the Pumpernickel bread from the oven, and allow to cool.
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Remove the loaf from the bread baking pan, and transfer it to a wire rack to cool to room temperature.
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Serve with extra softened butter. And maybe a warm bowl of soup, especially if it’s rainy outside.
Note
I first starting making brown breads such as Pumpernickel starting about a year ago. This gluten-free Pumpernickel recipe contains ingredients to darken the loaf, such as cocoa powder and molasses. The resulting loaf is not sweet, and is gently crumbly in the version described below.
The first time I added molasses and cocoa powder to a rye flour-based loaf, I expected the resulting product to be overly sweet. Surprisingly, the cocoa powder has no added sugar content, and serves to only darken the loaf—it doesn’t taste like chocolate when mixed with the bread dough, but it adds an earthy complexity and beautiful dark color to the finished product. Molasses is easy to find in most supermarkets, and you can increase the quantity slightly if you are looking for a sweeter final product.
With a more traditional Pumpernickel loaf, rye flour is used. If you are trying to make a non-gluten-free version with rye flour, make sure that you add really hot water to the rye flour and let the mixture sit and cool down before adding the yeast—this helps soften the rye flour before you mix in the added bread flour. With this gluten-free recipe version, I have substituted gluten-free buckwheat flour for the rye flour, and used some added gluten-free flour mix. It comes out tasting good, although perhaps a bit crumblier than a traditional pumpernickel loaf.
User Reviews
I love how this bread cracks naturally on the surface in the oven!
That’s wonderful to hear! How did the bread taste? Did the texture and flavor match the beautiful crack on the surface?