German Pumpernickel

• Traditional German pumpernickel was a simple, dense bread made with only two ingredients: rye and water. Rye meal was boiled or soaked in water for several hours until the grains softened. After rye flour had been worked into the mixture, the dough was slowly baked in a lidded pan for up to 16 hours. As the bread steamed, the rye pasteurized and caramelized, giving the bread a long storage life, a deep chocolate color, and its characteristic sweet flavor.

American Pumpernickel

• Maybe it was a lack of resources or perhaps a New World desire to break from tradition, but when the recipe for pumpernickel bread crossed the ocean to America, it changed. While rye flour remained a key ingredient, wheat flour became a common companion. Bakers no longer relied on steam to slowly raise and caramelize the bread, but used yeast or sourdough for loft, and ingredients such as cocoa, molasses and coffee to turn pumpernickel a deep brown color. The result was a softer, lighter loaf sometimes seasoned with caraway, onions, walnuts or raisins.

Rye Flour

• Whether you are making the German or the American version of pumpernickel, rye flour remains an essential ingredient. A good source of fiber, rye is a cereal grain resembling wheat in appearance. Sold in many forms -- whole grain, meal, cracked, and as a flour -- it contains less gluten than wheat. The resulting lower elasticity makes pumpernickel bread made with rye flour denser than a loaf with wheat flour mixed in.

Bread Flour

• American pumpernickel bread typically relies on bread flour to give the loaf more structure. Bread flour has had much of its starch removed, making it a higher-gluten ingredient. The higher gluten content works to your advantage as a baker. Gluten -- a mixture of proteins -- becomes elastic when mixed with water. As you knead the dough, it gets stronger, finally developing the strength necessary to trap the fermentation bubbles created by the yeast or the sourdough. This interaction causes the dough to rise.