Patchwork Psychology

Quotations of an excellent song by a somewhat well-know artist (mewithoutYou) aside, Saturday was a pretty cool day. I woke up just after noon, did some baking, made a kick-butt salad, had a decent chat with a cool neighbor and learned I like the canceled TV series “Arrested Development”. The baking was particularly interesting.

Perhaps it has something to do with moving into a new place, but I was inspired while making my grocery list this week to make some bread. I like awesome bread, so I was looking for a pumpernickel recipe. Interestingly enough, the key ingredients that transform normal rye bread into pumpernickel are molasses and cocoa. I was a little surprised by that.

Bread making is not for the faint-of-heart, as they say–if you do it from scratch. I didn’t want to be a poser of any sort, so I went the distance and did just that. Basically, I had to mix all of the stuff together. That’s a bit more tricky with a hand-powered beater. I ended up resorting to a wooden spoon and finally just getting my hands into it once the dough started to become the consistency of dough.

Apparently I was then supposed to “turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface” where I would then kneed the dough until it was “smooth and elastic”. I hoped I would know what that meant when I got there. However, I was foiled by the previous step of mixing in flour until the batter was “the consistency of a soft dough”, which I obviously had no idea of–when I plopped the dough onto my floured counter it stuck right on. It was quite an adventure working that through, trying to mix in more flour, and cleaning out the bowl for the next step while having thick sticky dough webbed between my fingers.

Finally that was done, and my loaf was on the porch rising. I was amazed when it actually did rise! I though for sure I’d screw that up somehow. But it seems a fairly resilient process, and despite my kitchen ineptitude the loaf rose. “Punching down” the loaf was a new experience as well, and I don’t know if I did it right. I don’t know if it can be done wrong. All I know is that my loaves didn’t rise very much after I punched them down. Maybe I waited too long before the punching phase? That’s what I’m figuring. If you have any input, please, let me know.

But the bread turned out pretty good, except for it’s flatness. It’s a pretty dense bread, mostly because it didn’t rise as much as I wanted. Perhaps my recipe alterations affected this as well: I traded all of the “all-purpose” poop flour for whole-wheat flour. Surely that contributed to its denseness!

Here’re a few photos from the experience.

Chef Hoss and his from-scratch flaxseed pumpernickel bread

Just the bread.

In general, it was a good experience. I’m excited to do it again…after the kitchen takes a good long break. Oh yeah, the chef, too.

Hoss’s Flaxseed Pumpernickel Bread

Ingredients

• 2 packages active dry yeast
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• some flaxseed
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cup rye flour
• 2 cup water
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 cupsish whole-wheat flour

Directions

1. Mix yeast, cocoa, sugar, flaxseed, salt, 2 cups rye flour in a large bowl and set aside.
2. Over low heat, combine molasses, water and butter and stir until butter is melted.
3. Beat molasses mixture into yeast mixture until well blended. Blend in remaining cup of rye flour.
4. Blend in whole-wheat flour until the mixture is the consistency of a “soft dough”.
5. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until “smooth and elastic”.
6. Place dough ball in a greased bowl and turn over so that the entire ball is greased.
7. Cover bowl with a towel and let rise in a warm place until the dough has almost doubled in size, or approximately 3/4 to 1 hour.
8. Punch down dough and divide in half. Let rest for 5 minutes, then form each half into a loaf and place at least 4 inches apart on a greased baking sheet.
9. Cover loaves and let rise until almost doubled again, or about 3/4 to 1 hour.
10. Diagonally slash each loaf crosswise three times.
11. Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes.
12. Cover loaves loosely with foil and bake for another 15 minutes, or until loaves sound hollow when tapped.
13. Immediately remove from baking sheet. Brush tops of hot loaves with butter. Cool on racks.