I love bread. I love the taste, smell and texture of a new loaf fresh out the oven or bought from a bakery. Not these excuses for bread you find in the British supermarket, pre-sliced and then vacuum-packed, but the proper rustic loaves with a crusty outer layer and a soft, airy middle. The threats I would read in children’s books in days gone by, “and so Jimmy was sent to bed with only bread and butter for his tea”, would not faze me; indeed I’m quite sure why Jimmy was so upset about it, unless it was burnt – toast I have issues with, why spoil a perfectly good piece of bread? The greatest thing since sliced bread in my world? Rediscovering old-style bread!
Perhaps I should explain how this revelation has come about into my life. Ever since I was little I have loved bread – I used to buy a speciality loaf after my exams (I think my sister favoured the more usual chocolate) – and being made to give up wheat for a year on medical grounds is one of the harder challenges I have had to face in terms of will power. No more loaves or baguettes; no more baps and buns; no more rolls or butties – my world became a bread free zone. Occasionally I would cheat, convincing myself it would be rude not to eat someone’s birthday cake and I got fed up of having to avoid Italian restaurants. Luckily after time went past, it was clear that having wheat in my diet was no longer an issue, so I am happily back munching. But I forgot the taste of good bread. For years I have only been buying packaged bread and it took coming to Germany to rekindle my love affair.
Incidentally, bread is very important within German cuisine, up there with sausages, beer and wine. Wiki faithfully assures me under their 'German cuisine' entry that there approximately 600 main types of bread and 1,200 different types of pastries and rolls. Now I don't claim to know how this compares to the UK or to other countries in the world, but this seems like a lot to me. Hence my suprise that supermarkets in Konstanz seem to lack a proper baked goods section – an onsite bakery, and as a result I spent my first few months eating weird dried bread that I managed to find next to the cereal (no, not Pumpernickel if you’re asking, this was labelled as ‘Brot’). By the check outs of my local supermarket, there is a bakery stand, where they bake fresh bread throughout the day; now, I would forget this every time I went to buy my groceries, until I saw it there smiling at me, calling me, enticing me. Over the last few weeks, I have started visiting this stand, splashing out on a good loaf of bread. Bread from a standard bakery is quite expensive here, between 2-3Euros for a loaf, which can vary in size, style and ingredients, but I’ll sacrifice my chocolate/crisp/biscuit ration to get my hands on this (slightly healthier?) temptation. It has become my weekly treat of trying a different type of bread: so much so that I now have a loyalty bread card…