Steakhouse-Style Pumpernickel Bread Recipe

Well bakers if you've ever been to the Cheesecake Factory or Outback Steakhouse you will know of the lovely pumpernickel bread that they serve there. It's warm, it's sweet, it's like nutty, it is so delicious. I'm saving you a trip out to a restaurant and I'm going to show you how you can make it easily at home and it is probably even better. It's such a fun recipe and you're going to love this dough. So here I have some rye flour, this is the bones of this bread. It's kind of nutty, it's kind of a little bit sweet also. It is what makes great pumpernickel bread. If you do not have rye flour you can use whole wheat flour and that also works really well. It's a lovely flour to work with, it has great flavor and it absorbs more liquid than traditional flour so it will actually make your bread last longer and stay softer. Now I don't use 100% rye flour in my bread, I half it with a little bit of white flour. It just means that your bread isn't really heavy, it's not doughy, this makes it nice and light. Now into this we're going to add in some unsweetened cocoa powder. Very important in this bread, it's what gives it depth and that rich color and also that darker flavor. We're going to add in some sugar for sweetness, some salt, and instant yeast. Now I like to use instant yeast because you can add it straight into your dry ingredients. If you want to use active yeast, I'm going to put a note on BiggerBolderBaking.com along with the recipe of how you can use active yeast. So just let those all mix together so that everything gets distributed. So let's mix up our wet ingredients. Here I have some lukewarm water. Yeast loves lukewarm water because it helps it thrive, it helps it grow. I like to pop it into the microwave, you don't want it to be too hot, you want to be able to put your finger in there and not feel the water around your finger, that means it's a good temperature. Next a key ingredient in this pumpernickel bread is molasses. Molasses is rich, delicious, we use it a lot in our holiday baking, and it is essentially one of the main ingredients in this bread. It's sweet, it has a bit of bitterness to it, but it just makes it absolutely lovely. So we're going to add that in there to our water, and then next we're going to add in a little bit of oil. I like to use vegetable oil, and then just give those ingredients a mix together. Now if you cannot find molasses in your country, don't worry. The best substitution is actually to make your own substitution, and I have a recipe on my website about that, it's really easy, it's brown sugar. So now just add your wet into your dry. This is a big dough, it does make two loaves. If you want to make just one loaf, you can divide the recipe in half. What I like to do is to make the two loaves and then freeze one, it freezes really well. And just so you know, you can knead this dough by hand, because it's a bit of a bigger dough you just need a little bit more welly, but it's totally possible, and it's a good workout. So once you add in all your liquid, you'll see your dough come together. You want to knead it on your machine around medium speed for around 8 minutes or so. The machine really does all the work here. Towards the end of kneading, if your dough is looking a little bit dry, add a splash of water in there, just to gather up any dry bits and to bring the dough together. So I have a particular fondness for this bread because we used to come to the United States as kids to go to Disney World in Florida as a whole family and we used to go to Outback Steakhouse and we thought it was the best restaurant ever because it had the Blooming Onion and you get this bread and it was like nothing we had ever had before, we were used to like kind of just never a flavored bread like this, and so it still sticks in my mind like being in the restaurant and eating it and just like thinking it was absolutely delicious and still to this day, I still think it's absolutely delicious. That's why I love to be able to make it at home. Okay, lovely. Our dough came together. Oh, it's a big one. You will notice that this dough is a little bit sticky. That's the nature of it because of all those lovely sticky ingredients we put into it. So once you manage to peel it out of your bowl, I'm going to transfer it into an oiled bowl, a nice big one to give it room to proof. The reason I oil it is because when it proofs, it can easily and seamlessly glide up the sides of the bowl without any kind of stress to the dough. Remember a dough is a living thing, so we have to take care of it, we have to feed it, we have to keep it warm and make its environment nice and cozy. So I'm going to cover this with some cling wrap, I'm going to lay over a tea towel to keep it extra snug and we are going to set this aside and let it proof for around an hour and a half to two hours. This is one of those doughs that I talk about that's quite sluggish when it has kind of, you know, a few different ingredients that aren't just the regular, you know, water, yeast, flour. It can be a little bit sluggish and take longer to proof, so give it all the time it needs to proof and double in size. So here's my dough, it's proofed, it's doubled in size. You will feel that it's not a really light, fluffy dough. Like I said, it's a heavier dough, but this is looking perfect. I'm just going to punch out that air, like so, oh my gosh, it smells really good. I love molasses. You know, like I said, you only usually use it around the holidays. I make like steamed pudding, we use it in our cookies, but I very rarely have it outside of the holiday season. So this is kind of like a nice treat. Cut it down the middle, like I said, two loaves. So here's a way to kind of get a seamless looking like loaf from a loaf pan. Just pass down your dough to around roughly, you know, 10 inches by 5 inches, and then we are going to roll it up, like so. This is how you kind of get a uniformed baguette size, and you just kind of want to turn in those ends, just like that. We have our seam on the bottom, if you want to give that little pinchy pinch, you can. So look, we have our nice rounded ends, I kind of tucked them in underneath, and there's our loaf. There we go, into our pan, and do the same with the remaining. You don't have to be too precise, roughly 10 inches, look at that, like mine's a little bit gnarly. But what we're trying to do is just get that uniform look of the loaf at the end. So pinchy those seams, and just tuck in those ends if you need to, to get a nice clean look. Lovely. So here's what I'm going to do now, cover them up, put our towel on top, and what I suggest with a dough like this, because it does take a bit longer to proof, is pop it in a warmer spot in the kitchen, and let them rise for roughly an hour or so. You want to see it rise up until it almost hits the lip of the pan, and that's how you know it's ready to go. So I just checked in on our loaves, and they've proofed up beautifully. As you can see, they've risen a lot, and if you push down the dough, it won't pop back up straight away, which means it is proofed and ready to go. So the last thing we want to do is just egg wash the loaf. Then I'm going to take my blade, or you can use a knife, and we're going to score the top, and that helps release out any steam. And then I'm going to scatter over some oats on top, just to give it that quintessential kind of steakhouse look. Lovely, those are our loaves. Now there's nothing else left to do except to get them into a nice hot oven. Bake your loaves at 375 degrees Fahrenheit, 190 degrees Celsius, for roughly 35-40 minutes, until they're a lovely dark golden brown on top. Our timer went off, which means our bread is done. And just look at how gorgeous these look in the loaf pan. They rose up, they're a lovely dark pumpernickel color, with beautiful scoring and oats on top, just like the real thing. And from first glance, you can see what a beautiful loaf this is. It has a lovely close crumb, but you can tell that it's really soft, like I said, from the extra hydration because of the rice flour. It smells sweet, nutty, caramelly from the molasses. This loaf has a lot going on, and I'm all about it. You can slice this loaf to make sandwiches, have it with soup, or what I like to do is spread butter on it when it's still lovely and fresh. All the lovely ingredients we used and the time we gave this dough made for a really lovely loaf of bread. This bread is flavorful, it's delicious, and it's incredibly soft. And now you can make it from the comfort of your very own home. I hope you enjoyed this video, stick around because I've got hours more content for you to check out, and I'll see you back here again really soon.