The Explosive Origins of Pumpernickel

Hello,

I’m always intrigued by the sheer variety of different breads around the world, often influenced by the local climate and what grains do best in their region. Irish soda bread worked well in the past because you’d struggle to get yeast bread to rise in a draughty Irish cottage on a damp day, whereas Italian and French yeast breads like baguette and ciabatta had perfect conditions. Then you have quick non-risen breads like naan and flatbreads in other cultures.

my rosemary focaccia

My late cousin always claimed our family motto should have been “I never met a carbohydrate I didn’t like”, and I love making my own bread, but I do make one exception. Rye breads are not for me and that includes the wonderfully named pumpernickel.

Pumpernickel entered the English language in the 1700s to describe a coarse, dark rye bread. It was a direct import from Low German, the Westphalian dialect to be precise. The region of Westphalia is now part of modern Germany and includes the cities of Cologne and Düsseldorf, but at the time it was independent and spoke its own language. Clearly they grew rye and loved loaves of pumpernickel.

The loaf’s name came from a slang name for a stupid person. The word compounded pumpern (to break wind) and Nickel (goblin, lout, or rascal) which was drawn from the name Niklaus (Nicholas in English). This means that if you called somebody a pumpernickel you were calling them a farting goblin.

I hope the bread doesn’t produce such explosive effects but it is suggestive that the original name for the bread was krankbrot which translates literally as sick bread. I hope that’s because patients liked to eat it when unwell, as opposed to eating it causing them to be unwell. Either way probably not a great brand name.

All this makes me wish some enterprising bakery will rename their pumpernickel bread as Farting Goblin. It sounds like a craft beer, doesn’t it? I wrote about German goblins before when I explored the etymology of cobalt – check it out.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

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p.s. It’s day 6 of NaNoWriMo 2023 today. I’m on 12,165 words and enjoying writing “The Librarian’s Secret Diary”.