I surfed around the internet until I found something that looked right... Some recipes use coffee and/ or cocoa powder to deepen the bread's colour, but we decided against that. The key ingredients of pumpernickel bread are molasses, rye flower, and wheat flour.
Here's the recipe we more or less followed:
- 1-1/2 tbsp active dry yeast
- 1-1/2 cups warm water
- 1/2 cup molasses
- 4 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp shortening
- 2 tbsp caraway seed
- 2-3/4 cups rye flour
- 3 cups bread flour, about
The rye flower, wheat flour, salt, and some seeds were put into a mixer (with the dough hook attached). Then the yeast mixture was added and the mixer was started on low. As the mixer worked, we added the molasses until the mixture was fairly dark - probably more than the recommended 1/2 cup. We adjusted the moisture content using flour and molasses until it was rolling into a nice dough ball in the mixer's bowl, then added some extra caraway seeds.
The dough ball was cut in half, each half was rolled into a ball, placed onto the baking sheet, then allowed to rise for 45 minutes.
The oven was pre-heated to 400F. Kheng pointed out that bread doughs shouldn't be moved once they have risen - that causes them to collapse. We place the baking sheet into the oven, sprayed the oven with 4 or 5 spritzes of water for humidity, then baked the breads for 25 minutes.
The result was quite tasty. Kheng immediately noted that we hadn't added enough salt... then he figured out that I had gaven him sugar instead of salt when we made the dough... WOOPS!
Otherwise, the only potential improvement is a little more rise time.