Sunday, May 20, 2012

An ode to the German bakery

Previous to this trip we'd sampled some of German bakeries offerings, but until we recently we hadn't realised just how amazing and ubiquitous these little gems are...


German bakeries come in many forms: the independent small town bakery, the cafe bakery, even the discount supermarket bakery. While the quality and types of bread and baked goods may vary between bakeries, the sweet smell of freshly baked bread emanates from every one.

Our favourite things so far have been the breads, the buns (Brötchen) and the soft pretzels (Brezel). German bread is very dense, filling and delicious. We've been using it to make our sandwiches at lunch everyday. Almost as frequently, we've been eating brutchen in the mornings. Brötchen come in several varieties often with a generous coating of various seeds. We've been enjoying these tasty buns with peanut butter, chocolate spread, jam and hagelslag (although not all on the same brutchen of course!). Brezelen, are most often sold with a sprinkling of coarse salt but we've also had them coated with seeds! These can be enjoyed anytime and are quite addictive!


As far as we can tell, every city, town, village and even tiny hamlet has at least one bakery. As we cycle along, it almost becomes a game to spot every town's bakery, and ponder all of the amazing things it would offer. And, thanks to full days of cycling, we've been able to regularly indulge guilt-free!