Germans are crazy about bread. A typical German bakery will have lots of different breads, made with regular flour, rye flour, whole wheat flour, you name it. There will be very dense, moist types of breads, with sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, bread made with potato flour, various kinds of rolls, pastry with or without fruit, cakes and more.
While we don’t have any arguments about it, Peter and I have different tastes when it comes to bread. I prefer a very plain Graubrot („grey bread“), one with a dark and crunchy crust and a very soft inside. It’s a very humble bread, one that doesn’t stand out in taste from the line of breads on the counter, but which will be incredibly good with just a bit of butter. On the downside this type of bread does lose is greatness after a very short time, so it’s best bought fresh and immediately devoured, though unfortunately this will never happen in a two-person household. He prefers breads with a high percentage of rye flour. Those are usually a lot darker and quite moist and their taste is not that subtle, but still not overwhelming. I usually let Peter decide what to get, because he is home more often than me and therefore more responsible for eating all the bread we buy.
Maybe the focus on supposedly healthy grains and dark breads is what makes us Germans so suspicious when it comes to the varieties of very white bread that are so popular in a lot of other countries. Take the French baguette, the Italian ciabatta or any English toast. They are so white, so soft and full of air. Surely there must be something wrong with it.
But of course there’s not. Okay, I still have problems getting used to the concept of not using any salt when making bread like we experienced in Tuscany. But apart from that, I love a French baguette or a soft white American toast just as much as the next (French and/or American) girl. Both the baguette and the toast have a special place in my little food-loving heart. The toast because it is the very essential ingredient for making wonderful sandwiches. The baguette because of how it feels, tastes and smells when you buy it still warm and break the crunchy crust for the first time and just inhale.
Today it might have been just one ordinary (German-made) baguette that saved me from going insane or at least from getting very whiny and annoying the hell out of Peter. After an exhausting shopping trip to Cologne we went to a computer store in the outer suburbs to get Peter’s computer back from a trip to the computer doctor. When we got there we tried to go grocery shopping as well, but the supermarket was so big and scary that I just couldn’t bring myself to buy a single peach, let alone do all my weekend shopping there. So, exhausted and cranky as I was, I just bought a baguette and the moment I held it to my nose and sniffed the very comforting smell of fresh white bread, I immediately got better. I didn’t complain a moment when the supposed short trip to the computer store turned into a much longer stay. Whenever I got bored or mildly impatient I just held the bread up to my nose once again and sniffed. That did the trick.
Sure, it wasn’t as fantastic as the smell of a real French baguette coming right from the oven, still warm, but it was good enough. And now I believe very much that, yes, bread cannot only still your hunger, it can also save you from insanity.
