F is for France, G is for Germany – Battle of the Breads

Hello there, folks. Apologies for being a bit slack on the blog front the last couple of weeks – I was caught up in the midst of organising and attending my dear big sister’s hen party over in Brizzol (or Bristol, if you don’t have the good fortune of hailing from there). No doubt this blog will also mention the upcoming wedding over the coming weeks as the big day draws ever closer, so please bear with me if I come across a little frazzled towards mid-May.

As I missed a week (F) due to the above-named circumstances, I decided to combine F & G in a single entry, and of course, there was no other option than to take on the two titans of Western Europe: France and Germany. With regards to other potential candidates, it was slim pickings for ‘F’ – a mere three countries fall into this category (points for naming them!). ‘G’ is a veritable bounty of countries, including such tempting destinations as Georgia, Greece, Gambia and Guatemala. I was particularly drawn by the prospect of Georgian khachapuri, which look basically like a bread boat filled with eggs and melted cheese (yes, I’m salivating too). However, given that good ol’ Germany has played such an enormous part in my life, it would have been injudicious to choose otherwise.

When I was a kid, we generally spent summer holidays either in France or the somewhat less forgiving – but no less spectacular or beautiful – climes of the Outer Hebrides in Scotland. As far back as I can remember, France has been well and truly on my radar, and it would appear that this is also true for a significant chunk of British people: as far as I can tell, France has never dropped out of the top 5 holiday destinations for Brits, often sitting jolie at the top of the table. A remarkable achievement considering the fervour with which Brits enjoy lambasting the French.  As for Germany, well, it has become my second home; somewhere which brings me equal amounts of unbounded joy and interminable frustration (anyone who has ever experienced German bureaucracy will know that pain); the home of a language I truly love to the very end, and full of wonderful, warm, secretly off-the-wall people. Seriously, the rep that Germans have for being stiff and humourless is unfair, in the same way that a surprisingly large number of outsiders believe that most Brits have been denied good dental work throughout their entire lives. Yes, a liberal use of British sarcasm may get you into hot water sometimes (speaking from personal experience), but believe me when I tell you that the Deutschies love a good larf as much as the next guy.

Food-wise, you couldn’t really get two countries more opposite than France and Germany, at least in terms of reputation. French food is supposedly the classic cuisine: spectacular, rich sauces that coat perfectly cooked cuts of beef; golden, flaky pastry sandwiched together with whopping great globs of custard; cheese and butter as far as the eye can see. German cuisine, on the other hand, is known to be a bit more on the bodenständig (literally like ‘ground-standing’, meaning down-to-earth) side, to put it delicately: sauerkraut, potatoes and Wurst form the basis of many people’s image of German food. It’s certainly not the lightest of cuisines, I’ll give you that. I truly begrudge the claim (heard from former German students of mine) that British food is terrible because it is so very heavy – a plate of grub in a typical German Wirtshaus (sort of the Deutsch version of a pub) ain’t going to help you shift a few pounds any time soon. However, it does have a little more to offer than just numerous varieties or pork and pickled veg. My ultimate recommendation for anyone visiting ‘Schland (Germany to you and me) is, in fact, a döner kebab – the closer you are to Berlin, the better they get. Legend has it that the inventor of said delight was a Turkish chap living in West Berlin, which is why the city is reputed to have the best kebabs in the country. Though you may scoff at this recommendation, I can assure you that you will make fewer better decisions in your life than to buy a döner in Berlin. And you can even get one at lunchtime without people assuming you’re drunk in the middle of the day!

For this week, I wanted to take two elements of French and German cuisine and pit them against each other in the ultimate gastronomical showdown. Thinking about the two countries and their food, there is one element that brings me greater satisfaction than any other: bread. In the blue corner, it’s la France, bringing its arsenal of baguettes, croissants and fougasse. In the red corner, we have Deutschland, tearing up the town with an army of brezels, rye bread and pumpernickel. If this were an actual fight, no doubt Germany would win: if I were a soft and buttery croissant, I wouldn’t fancy my chances against the rock-hard shell of a rye bread roll. Non merci! Luckily, that’s not the case, it’s just me faffing around in my kitchen, trying to find an excuse to eat more bread.

France is famed, quite rightly, for its exemplary boulangeries. I defy ANYONE with even a hint of a taste bud to walk past a bakery in France without stopping to ogle at the goods on offer (and then running in to borrow a mop to mop up all the drool you’ve left all over the pavement). Germany is truly the land of bread. What it may lack in finesse, it makes up for in sheer numbers: apparently, there are over 300 varieties of loaves, and a mind-boggling 1,200 types of roll and so-called Kleingebäck (small baked goods). But what to bake? For me, when I think of bread, I think breakfast, and so I plumped for baking two absolute classics of French and German breakfast fare: the humble Frühstücksbrötchen (crusty white bread roll) and the lah-de-dah croissant. God help me and my fear of all things yeast-based.

I started with the rolls, using a recipe from a ruddy excellent book called ‘Classic German Baking’ by Luisa Weiss (I cannot recommend it enough). Find me a bakery in Germany that doesn’t produce batch upon batch of crusty white rolls of a morning and I’ll eat my proverbial hat. These babies make an appearance on millions of breakfast tables throughout the country every weekend – albeit under the guise of various regional names – guaranteeing a good scattering of crumbs all over the floor at the end of the meal. They may be the simplest in the ROLL-call (HAHAHAHA) of German Brötchen, but the crispy exterior and fluffy white inside was more than enough to have me doubting my ability to reproduce them. Unlike a lot of amateur bakers in the UK, Germans are partial to using fresh yeast in their bread doughs. Although the utterly bizarre texture of it was a little concerning to me, I ploughed ahead on the promise of a more bready-tasting bread at the end. The dough came together incredibly quickly and by the time it was ready to rest overnight in the fridge (yes friends, no proving drawer here!), I was feeling pretty confident that I had a success on my hands. But of course, bread is a fickle thing – at least it has been for me in the past – and so the ultimate test was in the baking. The next morning, after chucking a handful of ice cubes into a searing hot baking tin (and waking my neighbours in the process, I’m sure) I maniacally shoved the tray of rolls in – indeed, with the panicked air of someone who has zero idea what the heck they’re doing throwing ice cubes into an oven at 8.30 on a Saturday morning. And then I waited. And watched. And sure enough, the little darlings went golden and crispy, rising in truly glorious fashion. Good grief, guys, when I finally took them out after a torturous 15 minutes, it was all I could do not to cry and eat them all in one sitting. Absolutely bloody wonderful, they were. BUT there was no time to rest on my laurels: it was croissant time.

If you are considering making croissants yourself, heed this warning: it takes FOREVER. There is an unfathomable amount of waiting involved, so it’s not the bread to go for if you’re in a rush. That said, I’m telling you now that it is soooo worth it. And incredibly, not that difficult. I was totally prepared for a full-scale meltdown in my kitchen, but instead found myself clapping with glee when I finally got round to baking them after waiting about 100 years. I’d say the biggest obstacle, waiting aside, is getting your head around the amount of butter in the damn things. It is more than you could ever imagine. Criminal, perhaps. But not enough to ever put me off eating them. HA! After making the dough, then filling it with what feels like an equal amount of butter (i.e. a lot), you have to perform a series of so-called turns, rolling and folding it this way and that to achieve the all-important layers, each time letting the dough have a little rest in the fridge, lest it get too tired of life and produce a buttery mess at the end. Then of course, there’s the rolling. Then the proving. Then the baking. It’s a labour of love, taking a good 6 or 7 hours from start to finish. Maybe that’s why the French are so proud of them, because it takes the patience of a saint to see it through to the end. But are the French in fact entitled to lay claim to the croissant? History would have us believe otherwise, suggesting that they originally came into being in either Vienna or Budapest when a baker apparently alerted the city big wigs to some mysterious rumblings underground. They turned out to be the sounds of some sneaky Turks attempting to invade the city by tunneling under the city wall. The tunnel was subsequently destroyed – crisis averted! The hero of the tale, the baker, asked for no other reward for his smarts than the exclusive right to bake crescent-shaped delicacies to commemorate the event (the crescent being the symbol of Islam) and – voila – the croissant was born! But shhhh, don’t tell the French that story.

After an epic day of baking (well, mostly waiting around for the diva croissants), it was time to crown the victor in the ultimate battle of the European breakfast bread. It has to be said, both were utterly delicious, delivering everything you could want from a brekkie. This week’s guinea pig and I deliberated the merits of both: the roll was the perfect vehicle for all the goodness the world of spreads and toppings had to offer, while the croissant was almost perfection on its own. But was it too buttery (not my words, I hasten to add)? Was the roll just too simple on its own, delivering only when masked by about a 5-inch layer of jam? The answer is no, to both of those predicaments. The two breads serve wholly different purposes and, as such, are delightful in their own way. Buuuuut in terms of ‘Holy smokes, look what I did!!’, the croissant takes the biscuit. Or in this case, the overloaded-with-butter breakfast treat.