The Fresh Loaf

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Pumpernickel bagels

mhjoseph's picture
mhjoseph

Pumpernickel bagels

Since reading about Calvin Trillin's search of the Lower East Side for a pumpernickel bagel from his past that was knobby and not boiled, I've been looking for such a recipe. In fact I'm difficultly finding any authentic recipe. I have Peter Reinhard's from Whole Grain Breads but it's not quite what I'm looking for.

Norm, if you're reading this maybe you know what I'm talking about.

b_elgar's picture
b_elgar

According to that wonderful New Yorker article of Trillin's, this particular pumpernickel bagel also had onion in it, unusual all by itself, along with the lack of boiling.

You may do well seeking out a Jewish-stype pumpernickel bread recipe and adpating it to bagel shape, and flavoring it with onion, as a review of the article in question implies the bagels actually came from a bread bakery as opposed to a bagel bakery (the article has delightful details of that difference, too).

The closest I come these days to the old-fashioned Jewish pumpernickel of my youth is made by Cohen's in Ellenville, NY, and the loaf contains raisins. I'd love a recipe that duplicated that bread, but I bet with some onion and no raisins, it'd work.

Boron

Nickisafoodie's picture
Nickisafoodie

While your hunting down the perfect recipe, try ESSA bagels in NY on 50th and 3rd (and one on the lower east side too).  Best bagels ever, including pumpernickel with raisins, but best is without raisins and with sesame, perfect match for pumpernickel.  Large, boiled, and chewey on outside, soft inside.  Best bagel ever made, and better than the touted H&H...  The gold standard. 

Most bagel stores (and bakeries) use caramel coloring to get the dark "pumpernickel" color we are so used to seeing.  The truth is that even 100% rye/pumpernickel is lighter in color, more like whole wheat if no darkening additives areused.   ESSA surely does too but I don't hold it against them.  In fact most pumpernickel bagels have more white flour than whole grain, but hard to tell given the coloring.

mhjoseph's picture
mhjoseph

Since I couldn't find what I was looking (or even know what I was looking for), I made my own version of pumpernickel bagels. I used the BBA recipe using pumpernickel flour for the sponge portion of the recipe and high gluten for the final dough. In half the batch I knead in raisins and the other half dehydrated onions and topped them with onion.

They came out very tasty.

 

 

 

 

 

hanseata's picture
hanseata

Espresso powder in pumpernickel? Oh, you Americans!

Karin

salma's picture
salma

Is there a diff between rye and pumpernickle flours?  I have never seen pumpernickle flour sold in my local supermarkets in northern N.J.

Salma

hanseata's picture
hanseata

Salma, pumpernickel flour is rye meal, a coarser grind of rye. For real Pumpernickel bread you need not only rye meal (pumpernickel flour), but also rye chops and, in many recipes, whole rye berries.

Specialty flours like rye meal or rye chops are usually not found in supermarkets, but in some health or natural food stores, or have to be ordered from King Arthur, NYBakers or other mail order suppliers.

Karin

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Pumpernickel is more of a method than just using a flour.  To me, they are Rye bagels and not Pumpernickel ones.  

Unless they are sourdough, have the slow baking process to bring out the caramelization and thus the natural dark color, and practically no crust and contain lots of coarse rye including berries or broken ones; someone is only pasting a name on them that is what?  A sales gimmick?  Get true!  Here's a challenge... Make real pumpernickle in bagel form!

Q: Can I use bagel flour, make a square loaf and call it a bagel? 

Mini

hanseata's picture
hanseata

As usual, you're right on, Mini. The so-called pumpernickel bread varieties here in the US are goose bumps inducing abominations. I was absolutely taken aback when I first saw something labeled "Pumpernickel" in a supermarket shelf, looking just like a darker version of a Wonderbread that could be squashed together and would bounce back to its original shape.

The real Westphalian Pumpernickel is so dense that, as the folk lore goes, in the olden days a suitor to a lady's hand had to be able to slash a Pumpernickel with his sword in one stroke - otherwise he was deemed a sissy and his suit rejected!

Karin

 

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

I also grew up in the states and am still an American.  I thought as much about pumpernickel as the next person or my parents before I met my husband.  That's what I knew as pumpernickel.  After tasting the real stuff, the fluffy dark loaves seem so...  off track.  I will still pop some into the toaster when I visit my folks.  And it still makes a passing sandwich.  I do wonder what's in it but rye is good stuff no matter how much wheat is mixed into it although I have to say I enjoy over 70% of the loaf as rye.  I just didn't know better, after all, the package said "Pumpernickel."   I thought that's what I was eating.   I'm sure most of the Americans imagine a pumpernickel bagel to be a not so heavy light rye bagel and not a sword welding test for true love and strength.  (Great story!)  Maybe slicing a pumpernickel bagel would be a test for puppy love. :)

Mini