Book & Baking Blog Entry 16

We've had an awesome time in Denmark. As, I'm sure that you've already noticed, I have loved the pastries of Denmark. My husband's brother-in-law took him to the local bakery a few times. They bought items called Copenhagens. They also bought snails (with chocolate and plain icing.) They also bought "bread."

It turns out that if you want to eat your sweet pastries it is imperative that you eat your "bread." Now, "bread" is absolultely delicious so as the "healthy" portion of the meal I highly recommend it. There are a variety of "breads," which are actually individual rolls, some sweet and some salty, and you put either nutella or some other "spread" or cheese on them respectively. The "bread" could be eaten plain it is so tastey. So, after you have gorged yourself on "bread" you then get other sweet pastries (wait isn't nutella sweet? or the other chocolate spread? or the jams etc?)

Yep, now onto the dessert. So, the copenhagen is a pastry that is many folded layers of light dough (think puff pastry but richer and less delicate) folded into a huge rectangle. It has a top covered in poppy seeds. You split it and then you are supposed to add butter and/or honey. I don't even remember if this was a "bread" or a "sweet.." There is disapproval if you do not add butter or honey. Believe me, I generally LOVE to add butter, but I could eat this all day long and not need the butter. It's amazing.

The cinnamon rolls/snails were just as tastey. I like that they felt that they had to add icing to a very rich pastry with butter and cinnamon and sugar already in it. It was great!

So after we left my sister-in-law's house we went to Copenhagen. My husband decided to try to reenact our bakery days except, to limit the calorie intake, he only bought sweet pastries (and only one for each of us--well, one plus..) WELL, clearly this is not done in Copenhagen (maybe even all of Denmark.) You must first EARN your sweet by eating your bread. Clearly we had committed a faux pas not to be ignored. Valiently my husband withstood the glare of the baker looking from my husband to the bread and back again. Bread. Husband. Sweet. Bread. Husband. Glare.

Finally my husband gave in and went to a different bakery. It turns out that all bakeries in Copenhagen have this strict belief.

Oh well, at least it tastes good.

Now we are back in Germany for a week. Will the brotchen still taste as good? Can the kuchen stand up to the fabulous almond cake that I got at the castle? It will be difficult, but I'm up for the challenge of trying to find an even better pastry in Germany. We have Hamburg, Lubeck, and Bremen on the list. Can one hold the key to the greatest pastry on earth?

Good eating.