Give Us This Day

Unequivocally, of the best parts of German cuisine is the bread. German law seems to have included a clause that each city block should maintain at least one bakery and one biergarten (for a later post).

The German imagination for what can go into a bread is creative and masterfully produced. The bakeries are not simply a few dozen rolls of white bread, or a few pastries to eat with one´s morning kaffee. They are full-blown doughy amusement parks for the mouth. German bakeries, even the hole-in-the-wall ones, offer a wide variety of brotchen (bread rolls), streusels (pie-like cobbler), pretzels, baguettes, scones, croissants, muffins, pastries, cheese breads, and mini pizza pies, to name a few. This of course is only on the front serving section. The back wall of every bakery, even those in train stations, is lined with large loaves of breads, ranging from ryes and pumpernickels to seeded bread, wheat bread, salted bread, herb bread, seasoned bread, crusty bread, flat bread, dark bread, faccocia, nut bread, fruit bread, and so on.

A SMALL bread stand at the farmers' market (above)

Streusel bigger than the size of your hand! (below)

YUM!
We ordered a streusel topping-only piece and a rhubard piece of streusel

The choices are overwhelming and exhilarating all at once. We have managed to make due with our limited German vocabulary of bitte and danke (please and thank you) by pointing, holding up our fingers like a four-year-old to let the nice German lady know how many of each type we want, and then narrowing our eyes at the register´s digital numbers to figure out how much money we owe. We then act like a four-year-old again while our eyes grow large and a big grin slow spreads across our face like warm butter, and we immediately dig into the bag, taking at least one bite of each piece we bought to sample our newfound treasure: Bread. As we wipe the crumbs off of our face or lick Nutella off of the knife, we enthusiastically discuss in detail which bread we liked best and why, which fortunately often leads to a second taste-testing of our top choices.

Frisch vom Brotshop
(Fresh from the breadstore)

Breakfast is not a boring affair in Germany. It has become an early day pick-me-up. We wake, walk to the cupboard (or bakery), take out at least four pieces of bread, and then begin the process to divide and conquer. we cut the bread up to share, and then luxuriously cover each piece with Nutella, creamy local butter, peanut butter, or a PB-Nutella combo (our favorite). We drink our coffee, and experience a little Nutella-smeared slice of heaven.

Our typical morning breakfast: a piece of wheat bread, multigrain bread, cheese bread, poppyseed break, and chocolate croissant. This is before we cut them in half and spread Nutella on them, too!

There is even a Mueller bakery!