Sandra

In my (biased) opinion, there is no other country that can make bread like the Germans. Since many Germans eat bread for breakfast and dinner, we really value our many different bread types.

Here are a few of the most common bread types we have to offer:

Graubrot/Mischbrot

= ‘grey bread’ / ‘mixed bread’

-> made with sourdough / yeast and a mixture of wheat flour and rye flour (usually around 60% rye flour and 40% wheat flour)

Weißbrot

= ‘white bread’

-> made with yeast and wheat flour

Bauernbrot

= ‘farmers’ bread’

-> traditional mixed bread made of rye flour and wheat flour (there are more than 3,200 regional types of Bauernbrot in Germany)

Schwarzbrot

= ‘black bread’

-> made with sourdough and whole rye flour

Pumpernickel

-> wholemeal bread made of coarse rye meal (at least 90%)

Dinkelbrot

= ‘spelt bread’

-> mainly made of spelt flour (at least 90%)

Roggenbrot

= ‘rye bread’

-> made with rye flour (at least 90%) and sometimes bread seasoning like caraway, anise, fennel or coriander

Vollkornbrot

= ‘wholemeal bread’

-> made of shredded or ground wholemeal grain (at least 90% wheat and rye)

Mehrkornbrot

= ‘multi-grain bread’

-> made of two or more different types of grain (can include barley, flax, millet, oat, wheat, and wholemeal flour)

Kartoffelbrot

= ‘potato bread’

-> typically with 1/3 potatoes and 2/3 flour

Let’s start with the simplest:

This is a breakfast roll; it has about a dozen different names in different regions of Germany. This is the working horse of German Brötchen-Tradition. Yeasted dough but not enriched, white wheat flour.

Here are its variations:

Top row: covered in sesame/poppy seed respectively

Bottom row: different shapes, same Brötchen.

Special mention: Käsebrötchen

Same as the very first one, just smothered in cheese before baking.

Now for the more extravagant ones:

Top row: Mehrkornbrötchen - like the bread mentioned above, this Brötchen is made of several different kinds of flour and whole grains and seeds. Different variations of this exist. Dinkelbrötchen: a Brötchen made from spelt flour, sometimes white sometimes full grain, sometimes with added whole grains like shown here.

Bottom row: Kürbiskernbrötchen: pumpkin seed roll. What an amazing idea. And Walnussbrötchen - walnut rolls. (In the same vein there exist also sunflower seed rolls and rolled oats rolls)

But did you know that variations of this exist?

May I present the cheese Brezel, lye croissant, and lye Brötchen (if you’re into the fluffy part of the Brezel), either salted or with seeds on top.

But Jana, I can hear you say - what about sweet stuff? We know you LOOOOVE sweet stuff! Isn’t there sweet stuff?

Fear not!

Here’s one of my all-time favorites, the Weckchen (as it’s called in my neck of the woods):

Sweetened enriched dough, fluff for DAYS, so fucking good. Eat it as-is, or go decadent and make a jam sandwich. Or a Nutella sandwich. Unf. I’m salivating.

And its variations:

With raisins and with sugar glaze and slivered almonds AND

(prepare to swoon)