Why German bread is the best in the world (2018)

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/germany-best-bread/index.html

by Tomte • 4 years ago

11 19 4 years ago

cnn.com

rurban• 4 years ago

It's good, but Austrian bread is still a bit better.

timeon2• 4 years ago

Even croissant comes originally from Vienna.

smudgy• 4 years ago

That's an interesting idea...

I was thinking about which types of breads that I really like, enough to go out of my way to buy and they're mostly German (or german-style) breads because they have interesting textures and tastes.

colordrops• 4 years ago

CNN's website is the worst in the world, heavily hijacking the back button.

bufordtwain• 4 years ago

Bread is one area where the US is sorely lagging behind Europe and there needs to be some sort of revolution. I don't think most Americans know what they are missing. I hope this will change soon, similar to the progress that has been made over the past 30 years with coffee and beer (and somewhat with cheese).

molloy• 4 years ago

Do you have any recipes for somebody in the US who has been meaning to dive into baking good breads? That's one culinary area I've yet to do a deep dive into, but I need to because I love bread and I'm so over what's available here.

tommiegannert• 4 years ago

Not OP, but I bake my own bread. I haven't bought much bread in the US, but if it's like Ireland, then it's white toast and soda bread. (I should add we had an excellent local baker in Dublin, so just talking about supermarkets.)

I like The Bread Kitchen [1] (from the UK) for yeast doughs. Accompanying videos to every recipe, and they're very diverse. As an example of a tasty bread, I suggest the Polar rye bread linked. It's a bit heavier than the Swedish original, but good.

For sourdough, I settled on Foodgeek [2] (from Denmark) as a starting point. He's doing a lot of fun experimentation. Even a sourdough Panetonne [3]! I should try that next Christmas and see how it compares to the one in the Swiss stores. If you want something more hardcore, he also does Danish rye bread [4].

My newest discovery is Adam Ragusea's idea of having bread fermenting slowly in the fridge [5]. Sure, people have been fermenting slowly in cellars, but with a fridge you can keep doughs for weeks.

[1] http://www.thebreadkitchen.com/recipes/polar-bread/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FaKxYM8TRo

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS9C-VDWtto

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EanzisEiMc

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4ABOKdHEUs

pintxo• 4 years ago

You may want to get hold of a copy of: Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

TulliusCicero• 4 years ago

Having recently finished up five years in Munich and being back in the states, I can’t really disagree. Some brands in the US, like Killer Dave’s, are okay, but it’s hard to get heavier breads and especially rolls here.

We’re using the Wildgrain subscription box to get good bread, but it’s quite pricey, and the croissants it comes with seem impossible to bake correctly (following the instructions just has them come out with a clearly undercooked center).

senectus1• 4 years ago

sorry but bread in Australia is the best I've ever tried.

Good strong wheat is grown here.

betaby• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_bread - gluten free, since the dawn of civilizations.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 4 years ago

East Europeans bake real bread. Sadly what you find in North America supermarkets and most bakeries is fluff.

My sister's Bulgarian piano teacher's husband, a former policeman, told of landing in Halifax Canada and going out to buy a loaf of bread to sustain them on the train to Montreal - and being much disappointed.

Me, I just came back from my every four weeks 200 km drive to my favorite Albanian bakery in the big city.

Markoff2• 4 years ago

Why not just bake your own bread? all you need is just decent flour

I'm these weeks experimenting with baking my own rolls and buns and results were surprisingly decent comparable with bakery. It's partly influenced by steep raise in prices, but also by laziness to walk to shop to buy bread, I find it easier just prepare by myself.

kinghtown• 4 years ago

I live in Taiwan and the bakeries and store bought bread here are quite bad. There is the occasional tangzhong/Japanese milk bread which is ok but everything is bland or overly sweet with a very loose crumb. It’s all the same enriched dough recipe everywhere.

People in Taiwan seem to hate salt, or pride themselves on avoiding it, so the bread often has zero salt in the dough which has an odd, neutral flavour profile. Whenever I talk about it with anyone they insinuate that it’s because I’m a foreigner and all foreigners are crazy about salt. Meanwhile, I’ve been to Japan and love the bread over there.. Bread should be 1-2% salt by weight(to the flour).

Dough is also never fermented here. This results in hilariously bad attempts at French bread like baguettes or country loaves. I grew up in Montreal and I am intimately familiar with what this sort of thing should taste like.

I do a lot of my own baking now.

miki_tyler• 4 years ago

I'm going to go out a limb here and I am going to say that the bread in Western Europe (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, excluding the UK) is vastly superior to their cardboard, heavy, tasteless Eastern counterparts.

timeon2• 4 years ago

What is this tasteless cardboard? I grow up on bread in Slovakia that is similar to sourdough from hipster bakery.

BrandoElFollito• 4 years ago

I am French and our bread is meh. Baguette is ok when it is good.

Compared to that, the breads I ate in central/eastern Europe are fantastic. I bought some from random bakeries and they were almost always very tasteful.

All this is a matter of taste of course, so starting that X bread is the best in the world is like saying that Y color is the nicest.

Markoff2• 4 years ago

Meh, German bread is almost same as Czech/Slovak one and I would definitely refrain from such bold statements, I was for instance nicely surprised by my breakfast bread (durum?) in Turkey and I remember it vividly being extremely good and thinking this is even better than our CE bread. Just because you eat bread parody in US it doesn't make it German bread best in the world.

snitch182• 4 years ago

Actually you get very average bread in germany. In the last 20 years everybody switched to those bake in the store things so they taste the same everywhere and the quality is declining.

Unless you consider toast a bread. That is what i remember from my year in the states. Toast is bread and that is it. But toast is not bread.

But if you find a rare hand made sourdough bread in germany.. it costs you ... but with a good olive oil and salt ... its the main course.

Why German bread is the best in the world (2018)

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