My brief history of German bread.

I've found a new hobby. Genealogy. I signed up for ancestry.com and I got hooked. I was curious, mostly, about my mother's side of the family. A distant cousin on my dad's side compiled a family history genealogy book back in the early '90s so I am fairly familiar with the history of that side of the family. My mother's side on the other hand I knew were from Kansas, but that's about all I knew.

From the part I have uncovered so far I have learned that the vast, vast majority of my heritage consists of wealthy, land-owning, English yeomen dating back as far as the 12th century. Almost every single line I trace back ends with the founders of Salem, MA (no witches yet), the founders of Boston, MA, generations of Medieval English knights, and Medieval families whose surname is that of the town they hailed from. That is all lines I have traced back, save one. All this ancient English blood comes through my great-grandmother's line. If I take my great-grandfather's I find myself on the German-Dutch border in the mid-1800's with a line of Swarts who ran a small family-owned bakery in Mittling-Mark, Germany. I found a distant cousin who has done a lot of research on the Swarts and has a flickr account with old family photos. There were even pictures of the old grain carts and tubs once used in the Swart bakery, now converted to flower planters.

I have to admit that I think this is pretty damned cool. If you know me, you know I am a bit of a German-phile. I am always trying to keep up on the language (though I have been waning of late) and obviously I love baking. One of the reasons I have always said I loved kneading dough and baking bread is because it makes me feel connected to generations of women behind me. But now I know it's not just the women behind me, but the men too. The whole family of bakers.

So, this weekend I wanted to do a little honor to my German baking ancestors and make a German bread. I found a recipe for pumpernickel out of a cookbook I haven't used before, so it was a little bit of a gamble. It started with a mixture of rye (2 cups) and white flour (6 cups), caraway seeds (4 tsp.) and salt (2 tbsp.).

It called for 2 and a half tbsp. yeast, which is more than I would ever think to use for a recipe.

It also called for caramel color to give the pumpernickel it's distinctive shade. I didn't have any of that, but there was a note that said you could make your own.

I made the caramel all right, but the recipe said the dough should now be "chocolate brown". It was not. Anyway, with the caraway it's really more of a rye. From this point on I stopped calling it Pumpernickel and just settled on Rye.

So, on with the rye bread!

After about 2 hours of rising the dough was just about to burst forth from the bowl.

I divided it into two loaves and let them rise in pans for another hour. Then I baked at 350 for 45 minutes.

The result is a very pleasing rye. It's Mike's favorite rye so far. I'll keep it in the roster, but next time I'm doing a real pumpernickel with molasses and everything.