Westfälischer Pumpernickel

Appearance & taste

Westfälischer Pumpernickel is black or very dark and has no crust. The structure of the rye grains can still be clearly seen in the crumb. The bread is barely aerated and moist; together with the sugar that forms during the long baking, this makes the slices stick together very slightly. It comes in a rectangular or round shape.

The taste is bittersweet: slightly sweet, sometimes with a hint of acidity and at the same time mildly aromatic. Pumpernickel stays fresh for a long time, several months shrink-wrapped and up to two years in tins. No preservatives may be added.

Production

The dough consists of at least 90 % coarse rye meal for baking or wholemeal rye meal, plus water, salt, yeast and already baked Westfälischer Pumpernickel. Optionally, other cereal products such as malt or sugar beet products such as sugar beet syrup are added. The added pumpernickel may come from sliced-bread leftovers, other production leftovers or unsold pumpernickel. It keeps the bread fresh and enhances the flavour; it too must be made in the area.

It is baked for at least 16 hours in steam baking chambers or in a deck oven in a closed baking tin. In the process, the grain’s enzymes are first activated and finally stopped again. They break the starch down into various sugars, which later caramelise; the dark colour comes from the Maillard reaction. According to the specification, there is no other bread with such a long baking time. Controlling the temperature requires great experience.

Everything from mixing the dough to baking takes place in the area. Sliced pumpernickel in prepackages may only be sliced and packed at the production site, because the bread without a crust moulds easily.

Origin & history

According to the specification, the tradition goes back to the year 1570. Westphalia has a maritime climate shaped by the North Sea, with sufficient rain, summers that are not too hot and rather mild winters. This is why a lot of rye has traditionally been grown there. Rye bakes differently from wheat: its dough holds less gas, and the bread becomes denser. The widespread growing of rye gave rise early on to distinctive types of bread, including pumpernickel.

How firmly the bread belongs to Westphalia is shown by a verse that appeared on postcards of Westphalian towns around 1900: “Seht Ihr von fern Westfalen’s Pforte winken, das Land der Pumpernickel und der Schinken?” (“Do you see from afar the gate of Westphalia beckon, the land of pumpernickel and ham?”)