The answer, about 80% of the time, is the bread.
Oh, the bread. Glorious bread.
It took some time for me to become comfortable with ordering in a German bakery. It's overwhelming to walk in the door. Stacks of rolls, pretzels, small loaves, large loaves, rye, wheat, white, with seeds, without seeds...not to mention the sweet breads.
The locals, of course, know exactly what they want.
A child walks in with a list of things to take home to his family.
Indeed, 7 year-olds head to the bakery alone to buy the bread for breakfast on a Saturday morning.
We send the older two on bikes. They think it's fun.
How to talk about bread?
Let's talk types of bread, shall we?
We start with the familiar. Enter the Laugenbrezel.
This is what many people think of when they think of Germany and bread. It's a staple in children's diets. At the risk of being accused of disloyalty to my fellow Swabians, I think the Bavarians have the best brezeln in the country.
There. I said it.
When these are fresh from the oven, they are simple carbohydrate perfection. Crispy outside and perfectly soft inside. If you enter a German bakery with a young child, it is not uncommon to have an employee put a pretzel in your child's hand without even asking your permission.
I recall them putting a pretzel in Kate's hand.
She was 8 months old. I kid you not.
Laugen come in different forms.
Laugenbroetchen.
Laugenstange.
Now, if you buy one of these pretzels, you need to eat it within hours. Yes, hours. This dough, and I'm unsure why, does not keep for long. I have kept one of the rolls (Laugenbroetchen) for the next day in a plastic bag, and it was edible the next day but not remotely the same taste.
After the novelty of living in Germany wears off a bit and the palate years for something beyond white bread, it's tempting to move on to other breads. As I married a man who had already lived in Germany, he was most helpful in understanding the different types of breads eaten at different times of day.
Breakfast.
I could write a whole blog post on a typical German breakfast, but that will have to wait for another day.
If you are buying your bread and planning to eat that morning, then I highly recommend the broetchen, or rolls. They are fresh for the morning, and then they get dried out and less tasty in the afternoon.
But why would you EVER wait until the afternoon to eat them?
Variety abounds. White, rye, whole wheat, kamut, spelt, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, walnuts, sesame seeds, raisins, and even cheese.
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| Kamutbrot. Has little bits of carrot in it. |
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| Sunflower seed bread. |
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| Whole wheat. |
Lunch in Germany is normally different from your typical American sandwich lunch. Usually the main meal is served at lunch and is a larger, cooked, full meal more like our American dinner. They normally eat something lighter in the evening, like bread with sliced meat or cheese, or soup with lighter bread.
We still do many sandwiches for lunch, as the kids pack them for school. Lots and lots of varieties. Roggenbrot, Wurzelbrot, Bauernbrot, Tessinerbrot, Braumeisterbrot, and others.
Then there are specialty breads for the season. These are fun.
Wild garlic bread.
Egg white bread.
Witch's bread.
Walnut bread.
I have heard that one should not eat certain types of bread in the evenings, as they are too heavy for the body.
Phooey.
What I really chuckle about is the temperature of the breads. Eating a warm pretzel, besides being a little treasure in the day, is perfectly acceptable. It seems that all the other breads, however, require cooling to room temperature before eating.
But I'm an American who loves "fresh from the oven" bread!
We smile when we ask for a loaf which is apparently not quite cool.
We get the eyes-over-the-glasses warning, "The bread is too warm to eat. You must let it cool."
"Yes, I understand. Thank you."
I also understand now why I can't have that warm loaf of goodness sliced at the bakery.
Machine that slices bread gets gummy. I get it now.
Perhaps my bread knife at home won't work well either.
No matter.
Maybe we'll just eat the whole loaf with our bare hands.
