Man, I love eating breakfast in Germany. It’s so different to here in the UK. And a typical German one, in contrast to a Full English Breakfast here, is something that we can indeed eat on a daily – though of course there are a couple of things that are reserved for some more posh days, like the weekend or a special occasion. But the main spirit is always the same – and it all starts with bread, of course.

We do love our bread

Sure, yes, we also eat cereals – but if you’re having a classic German breakfast, it includes bread – lots of it. Especially if you’re out and about, but I can also honestly say that we’ve always had at least 2-3 different types of bread when I grew up.

But the best part are bread rolls – [Brötchen]¹. There are so many different ones in Germany, not just the classic you’d find in English stores, if you’re lucky. But tons of different toppings (classically seeds such as sunflower, poppy, pumpkin etc.) and tons of different types of flour, too. We’ve got light ones, dark ones, potato bread rolls – pretzel dough bread rolls! If you want to experience the selection a tiiiny bit, I recommend going to a LIDL here in the UK. As a German supermarket, they’ve got a little bit of what’s available.

Every bakery has a selection of a good 10 different types – even small ones. And it is very common for us to leave the house in the morning before breakfast to buy a bag full of them in your nearest bakery – which is never far away. In fact, going to the bakery on Sundays as a little 5-year-old were my first experiences of both independence and using money. Ah, childhood!

German breakfast is mostly cold

In contrast to a Full English Breakfast for example, we usually only have cold things in the mornings. There are exceptions to this, of course – but these are usually considered fancy and we only really have them on special occasions or, say, the weekend. This includes fried, boiled or scrambled eggs, for example – or bacon. But not the British kind, no: the thin and crispy one. Other cold fancy things may include smoked salmon (yum!) or – if you’re living in the north especially – tiny Northern Sea shrimps.

Besides that, everything we can actually put on bread or Brötchen is relatively straight forward: cold cuts or spreadable variants of meats or cheeses. And as you’d expect, we have loads of them! Way more than is available here in the UK (where almost all your cheese is just a different variant of cheddar. I know that’s not accurate, but have a look at your cheese and tell me that’s not at least a little bit true). I actually do miss some of my favourite things I used to eat on my bread, which don’t have a proper substitute here.

Besides that, we are suckers for a good jam or honey – and we’re especially fond of putting butter underneath it all. Doesn’t matter what’s on top, butter is the conductor.

It’s also common to have at least a little bit of fruit or veggies with it – usually sliced cucumber, bell pepper or tomatoes, maybe. A glass of orange juice is the classic, of course, next to your first cup of coffee, if you drink it.

Ah, man! Writing about this made me both hungry and a bit homesick. I can’t wait to visit my family next – and it’s definitely got nothing to do with me wanting fresh Brötchen!

[Picture by Markus Spiske – danke!]

1. Das Brötchen – a bread roll. Here’s the concept: if we want to describe that something’s cute or smaller than the original item or being, we add the suffix -chen to something. In this instance, it’s added to “Brot”, which is bread. So yes, a bread roll in Germany is literally called an adorably tiny bread. ↩︎