Try This Medieval Pumpernickel Method: Your Store-Bought Version Is a Fraud (3 Ingredients)

From Medieval Way

Medieval Way explores the historical roots of pumpernickel and contrasts authentic traditional methods with modern commercial practices. Discover the basic ingredients and long, low-temperature baking process that originally defined this dense, durable rye bread before industrial alternatives became the common standard in grocery stores.

Pull a loaf of pumpernickel off the shelf at almost any American grocery store, turn it over, and read the very first ingredient. It will not say rye. It will say enriched wheat flour. Read a little further and you find something stranger. There is more water in that loaf than there is rye. And that deep, near-black color you have always associated with pumpernickel, the color of wet earth and dark chocolate, was not earned in any oven. It was poured in from a bottle of caramel coloring. Some brands reach for cocoa instead. Others use instant coffee or a slug of molasses. The package says pumpernickel. What is actually inside is a wheat loaf in a costume.

The real thing uses three ingredients: cracked rye, water, and a little salt. There is no wheat flour anywhere in it, and not a single drop of dye. It is baked for up to twenty-four hours, it survives for months without one preservative, and it produces one of the lowest blood-sugar responses of any bread science has ever measured. You have eaten authentic pumpernickel. At least, that is what you were told. Because the loaf medieval Germans actually baked shares almost nothing with the one on your shelf, starting with a name that was never meant as a compliment.