Divide & Rise Pumpernickel Bread

Divide & Rise Pumpernickel Bread
Hi! I'm Kip and we are here on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are making Pumpernickel bread, a dense rye bread. We've now kneaded the dough and it is time to turn out the dough onto our work surface divided into two portions and prepare that to raise. Now when you are turning dough out onto a surface, there are different ways to do that. You can just put some flour on your surface and roll that out. That is fine but it is a little bit messy. For what we are doing here, we are not doing a lot of hand work. We are just going to divide into two portions. Sometimes I just like to go ahead and put a little cooking spray on my surface and that will keep the dough from sticking and turn the dough out onto that surface. I also take the two containers and put a little cooking spray in those to keep that from sticking too badly and there we go. We have a nice dense roll of dough. Take your pastry cutter or bread cutter whatever you want to call this thing and what is nice about these is they don't have a sharp edge so it is great for cutting dough, cinnamon rolls and so forth. But you are not going to cut your counter unless you really get on it, so you don't need a cutting board all the time. And just take that, make a nice ball and plop that down into your container and the same for the next piece. Make yourself a ball and plop that down into your container. Now you can either take to rise, a little oil on here or a little butter. Also, cooking spray which is a whole lot easier. Just rub that around on top. Don't be afraid to get your hands in it. Baker's do that all the time. I see a lot of people wanting to put their hand on the food but if you saw how baker's work, as long as your hands are clean, especially in a custom scratch bakery what I used to work in, we do it all by hand for the most part. So now our dough is ready to rise. Put it in a slightly warm place. The oven is a good place to put it with the light on and let it rise for one and one-quarter hour. Also while it is rising, you can also put a damp dishtowel over your dough which is real common for people to do. I've come to the point where I like to use the Saran wrap just to put over that and I don't secure it over the top exactly but this way it will rise and it protects the surface from the air so that it doesn't dry out too badly and it will rise and push up. When I take it off, I can just throw it away. A dish towel being that it has a course surface, will actually get into the dough and you will have to wash the towel and you have to anyway but it is just kind of messy and I don't care for it. I started using cellophane.