Nobody in Germany thinks of baking regular, plain white rolls at home. You get them freshly baked everywhere, in bakeries, supermarkets, and even in gas stations. Every German region has them, called "Rundstueck" in Hamburg, "Schrippe" in Berlin, "Semmel" in Munich, or simply "Broetchen" (little bread).
On a trip to South Tyrol (a border area between Austria and Italy) as a student, I first tasted a sample of the spicy rye breads typical for the region. Hiking up the mountains to a "Huette" (a small rustic inn) we were served Vinschgauer Paarlen with homemade butter and smoked ham (Suedtiroler Speck). The flat bread was quite spicy. I didn't know what herb was in it, but it smelled and tasted wonderful.
In Quebec the one thing I'm always really looking forward to is, of course, French cuisine. For our daughter's graduation in Montreal we put up in a fairly nice hotel near campus, and went down for breakfast with pleasant expectations.
Heading straight for the croissants I noticed their lack of crispness, cold and tired they were sitting in the display. Well, there was the toaster, and innocently pretending not to understand the warning: "Pas des croissants" ("Nix comprengg!") I revived my lackluster pastry (no smoke alarm).
There are two things members of our patchwork family have in common - we love good food and we hate olives!
Even the pickiest of our kids, Valerie, producer of the famous "square mouth" whenever I made her try at least one bite before she said she didn't like it; and Francesca who ordered "just white rice" when we ate at a restaurant, ended up as foodies. Valerie even became a chef!
I had a visit by a rep from my wholesaler, Downeast Food Distributors, who left a sample of a new gluten free bake mix to test some bread and pastry recipes. It consists of a mixture of rice flour, potato starch, sugar, salt and 5 different gums plus methylcellulose. This chemical array is necessary to enable the bread to rise at all and not fall apart.
