Breakfast of champions
I love breakfast in Europe. No boring dry cereal and tasteless white toast.
This first meal of the day is a serious matter. There’s plenty of choice—and it’s all my kind of food. Most selections are savoury and can include cheeses, cold cuts, fish, raw veggies such as carrots and cucumbers, pickles, pates, hard or soft-boiled eggs, butter, jams, marmalades, honey and the BREAD. Europeans understand and revere bread. Most of the loaves seem to be sourdough—it can be light or dark, plain or laced with nuts or seeds.
There are sensational pastries and decadent croissants too. A favourite was the special sweet Hamburg pastry. I could almost move to Hamburg for a delicacy this good. We tried two kinds—one with chocolate bits and one without. There’s a pic in the slideshow of two chocolate ones in a basket.
A German friend jokingly said their economy relies on the A, B, C shops—Apothekes (pharmacies), Bakeries and Cafés.
Poor John was official bakery shopper in a few places. He’d pop out in the morning—especially in Berlin—to buy a half a loaf of organic sourdough walnut bread. A whole loaf is a fixed price, but part of a loaf is weighed and then priced. Some bakeries even sell by the slice.
I have quite a few bread/baking cookbooks—including German and French ones. So I’ve promised myself and Poor John that I’ll go back to bread-making when we get home. During the 1980s, I made most of the bread we ate. That started in Syria and was out of necessity, after I bought a few loaves that had black streaks running through them. But I was lucky enough to have a mother who made bread three times a week, so the thought of bread-making wasn’t too daunting.
Where to next? 
Bread, is a good food to eat and the right kind. All I see (for the most part) in supermarkets (Low-medium Income areas Metro NYC) is all sorts of White Breads.. Yuck ten times over. I have to often find a good bakery in an upscale neighborhood and get a good bread… or travel into Manhattan. I know when growing up we had Jewish Rye or Pumpernickel breads with HARD CRUSTS… Wonderful! I can find these in German Bakeries and other good special bakeries… including gourmet food stores.
I also like the photos you sent along… and having a good breakfast is important, as seen in the photos.
Sy S.
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Hi Peggy,
The only problem with such an enticing breakfast, and so many choices, is that it would take half the morning to finish. After all, you wouldn’t want to rush such a decadent experience. My many and varied forays into food.com have convinced me that I need a Kitchen Aid mixer because then I too would be able to make bread. And just so’s you don’t get a surprise, I’ve given you as a reference to a couple of people on that forum. They expressed an interest in the vegetable peelers that I linked to my gadgets post and I said that I’d be happy to buy them for them and post them. However, as many people today get nervous about giving out their personal information, I said that we are very good friends and that you’d vouch for me to assure them that I was genuine and trustworthy. And thank you for the postcard. It came yesterday. Cologne does indeed have a beautiful skyline. Keep up the posting and the delectable photos.
Louise
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The Germans love bread and so do I. The two of the foods I think I miss most are German bread and ice cream. I rarely saw an overweight German. It must be the walking culture that keeps them fit.
Jim
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Not only Germans but most of European people are not overweight because they do not eat genetically modified food, processed food and fat free food. They prefer to cook and eat the real meal. All of them eat a lot of bread, pasta, butter, even pure pork fat and still they are not overweight.
The huge mistake of North America people to eat a lot of junk and fast food. It is only my humble opinion.
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Yes, I think processed, fast and junk food are a big problem in North America. I buy wonderful fresh foods in Australia, which is where I live. And, as I mentioned towards the end of the post, I have gone back to making all our bread, especially sourdough.
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I visited Sidney in 1995 and one of my biggest impression is the fish market there. If we had something similar here in Toronto I think we would eat only seafood.
Thank you for following my blog.
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It’s a wonderful fish market. I’m glad you have a happy memory of it. Thanks for following my blog too.
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