Much Ado About Munich: Our daily...

Bread! In continuing the posts on things I especially like about Germany and Munich, I naturally needed to say something about the wonderful bread here. German Brot is ubiquitous, but (for a North American) amazingly tasty.

Here is an example of our bread basket (from our first apartment, photo
taken by Julia).

What can I say. Three quarters of Germans' body mass must come from wheat and rye. The typical German eats bread or buns for breakfast (with jam, or cold cuts), and then also as the staple for the evening meal, since they usually have their largest hot meal at midday. Bread really is a daily essential here.

My favorite bread is from the "Hofpfisterei" (which, I believe, is the same
bakery which supplied the royalty of Bavaria since the 13th century.

My favorite bread, the "Öko-Spezial" from Hofpfisterei, is 90% rye (and 10% wheat), and it has a delicious full flavor. Many of the traditional breads in Germany are rye based, and come in large round boules, of which you can ask for a quarter or a half. There are also awesome white breads, including baguettes (not quite as good as in France) and lots of Brötchen (buns, which are actually called "Semmeln" here in Bavaria ).
In a country with very strict Sunday closing laws, bakeries are the only type of business to be found open for a few hours on Sundays. And they really are everywhere. According to a post from the Goethe Institute, there are 47 bakeries in Germany per 100,000 inhabitants: That's one bakery for roughly 2000 people. You cannot walk a city block in Munich without finding one, usually with beautifully presented displays of their wares. Even in the train stations there are bakeries that would be fine specially shops at home...

The Rischart bakery at the Ostbahnhof (train station)

Of course, being in Bavaria, I need to especially point out the pretzels, which are amazing! Brezn, as they are called here, are the perfect snack; crisp and salty outside, and soft and chewy inside [wait, this sounds like a Gary Larson cartoon...] You see kids on the streets eating them all the time -- they're relatively healthy with no sugar or fat. A Breze tastes great by itself, or especially awesome with a bit of butter or cream cheese. They're not trivial to make -- the distinctive flavor comes from being dipped in a solution of sodium hydroxide (lye) before baking -- but maybe we will try when we get back, since otherwise we'll really miss them!

Our latest Brotzeit basket, with Brezn...

At least a couple evenings per week now, like a good German family, we have Brotzeit (literally "bread time", but it refers to a light meal of bread with cold cuts) for supper. Good cheese and cold cuts on great bread makes for an easy and surprisingly tasty meal. If it were easier to find good bread at home, we'd do this more often there too -- how great it is not to cook, and still have everyone enjoy a meal at home.

I could almost write a separate post on cheese, and certainly one on the variety of cold-cuts/wurst available here, but for now I'll include a couple pictures from my favorite places to shop for our Brotzeit toppings.