Pumpernickel is the most useful bread in this cupboard and the least used. It is vacuum packed, keeps for months unopened, needs no cooking and is dense enough to carry a topping without collapsing.
Once the pack is open it is ordinary bread, and the airless packaging that kept it does nothing for it afterwards. That is worth understanding rather than assuming: vacuum packing and what it does not do.
- Olives, capers and sun-dried tomatoes chopped together as finely as patience allows. Six minutes of knife work.
- Oil, lemon, garlic granules and pepper worked through.
- Spread thickly on the pumpernickel.
No salt anywhere near this. Olives, capers and sun-dried tomatoes are three of the saltiest things on the site.
The bread is sweet and sour and heavy, and it wants something equally assertive on top. Anything mild simply disappears against it.
Serves 2 as lunch, four as something with a drink.