German Bread Types And Ingredients

In 2014, the German bread culture was recognized by UNESCO as an intangible German cultural heritage because of its unique diversity. We will show you which types of German bread belong to this bread culture and how they are traditionally prepared!

Over 300 types of bread

A German type of bread is made using traditional artisanal techniques and consists of certain natural main ingredients. The diversity of varieties is the result of varying ingredients, a wide variety of production methods, and the use of a wide variety of oven systems. There are many different types of bread that are baked at different temperatures and humidity levels. Altogether there is a wide variety of local types of bread, the exact number of which is not known.

Without modern technology and the Internet, there was no overview at all of the numbers of German bread varieties. The widely scattered records allowed no more than estimates. Such an estimate was carried out by the Federal Institute for Grain, Potato and Fat Research (predecessor of the Max Rubner Institute, Federal Research Institute for Nutrition and Food) several decades ago. This resulted in 300 types of German bread, a number that has never really been checked but is still often quoted in the media today. Experts wanted to know more, for the “Bread World Record” in 2005, more than 1000 types of bread were documented with modern digital possibilities. It has not been documented how many of these were actually artisan loaves, because there is a problem with counting the types of bread.

Variation through new manufacturing processes

In recent decades, much traditional craftsmanship has been replaced by faster manufacturing processes. In traditional production, bread doughs are prepared over a long period of time and at different stages and are left to rest before baking, sometimes for a very long time. There is plenty of variation among the many types of bread (with special spices such as caraway, high-calorie holiday bread, etc.).

If functional additives ensure that the bread dough can be immediately put into the oven, then it makes sense to bake endless variations: the dough can be divided and equipped with special ingredients without interfering with the ripening of the bread or other work processes, where the bread must be left alone. The recipe can easily be modified because the results of this quick baking process do not develop the full flavor of real artisan bread anyway.

That’s why a colorful mishmash is on offer today:

• Real old German bread
• Bread and dough pieces that only pretend to have been prepared according to the rules of the trade
• many new bread specialties that change daily at some Fix bakers.

The bread register of the bakers’ guild now lists so-called “bread specialties” instead of bread types. Because it would be bureaucratic to separate the traditional craftsmanship from the many new bakery members. Over 3200 bread specialties are now listed, which are entered by the bakers themselves. No one knows how many of these are real German bread, but artisan bakers are on the rise again everywhere.

List of German bread

In the guiding principles of the German Food Book (DLMB), bread is divided into 17 large, traditional groups of varieties according to the grain used and the manufacturing process, the mandatory characteristics and properties of which are each described. If you know which variety group a type of bread belongs to, you know the main ingredients of this type. Here are the 17 groups of varieties with the most well-known types of bread/traditional baking methods:

Wheat bread or white bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% wheat flour
Traditional preparation: raising agent yeast, numerous forms of preparation from baking in a tin to braiding affect the taste.

Sorts:

• German white bread/box white bread
• German versions of the Italian ciabatta or the Provençal fougasse, both with olive oil
• German versions of flatbreads from various cultures
• Raisin bread (Mares, Kloben, Klaben)
• stick white bread

Mixed wheat bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: More than 50 and less than 90% wheat flour
Traditional preparation: with a high proportion of wheat only with yeast, the more rye flour, the more yeast, and sourdough. There are also many (varietal) shapes of mixed wheat bread because dough with a high proportion of wheat flour is generally easy to shape and score.

Sorts:

• French country bread
• Half and half
• Hamburger fine bread (with buttermilk)
• Kassel bread
• crust bread
• Munsterland mares
• rose mares
• Swiss bread
• Mixed bread containing protein such as lupine bread, protein bread
• Special bread such as Thuringian potato bread, pumpkin bread, chestnut bread, buttermilk bread

Rye bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% rye flour
Traditional preparation: Rye dough can only be baked by adding acid, traditionally this acid is only added by sourdough (from water, flour, heat, and time). The sourdough gives the bread a hearty, slightly sour taste and makes it much more durable than wheat bread.

Sorts:

• farmers bread
• Berlin country bread
• Frankenloaf
• malt grain bread
• Spessart crust

Mixed Rye Bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: More than 50 and less than 90% rye flour
Traditional preparation: Here, the hearty taste of the rye sourdough is softened by adding wheat flour, with a high proportion of wheat, yeast is usually also used. Rye bread and mixed rye bread are usually baked smooth in simple molds or evenly pierced on the surface. With this popular bread group, remnants of a long-gone regionality have been preserved: in southern Germany, many round shapes are sold; in the north more long loaves.

Sorts:

• Old German farmer’s bread
• Altmark bread
• Bavarian house bread
• double cheek
• Eifel bread
• barley bread
• heather bread
• Hesse countries
• country bread
• Malfa bread with 10% barley malt flour
• carrot bread
• Paderborn farmer’s bread
• Silesian country bread

Various classic and new types of German bread “oscillate” between mixed wheat bread and mixed rye bread, i.e. they are baked in variants with more wheat flour or more rye flour, e.g. e.g.:

• Bavarian house bread
• beer bread
• Gourmet bread (chopped, roasted hazelnuts, soybean meal, sunflower seeds)
• Nut bread with walnuts, hazelnuts, and other nuts
• olive bread
• Black Forest bread
• Westerwald country bread

Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% rye and wheat whole grain products; in the case of “wholemeal bread” in any ratio, in the case of “wholemeal wheat rye bread” more than 50 percent wholemeal wheat products, in the case of “wholemeal rye wheat bread” more than 50 percent of them wholemeal rye products. At least two-thirds of the added acid must come from sourdough.
Traditional preparation: wholemeal bread is made from crushed to ground wholemeal cereals, water, yeast, and/or sourdough and salt. Sometimes spices are added, and there are many variants known in terms of shape, taste, and structure.

Sorts:

• consignment bread
• Black bread (not always genuine wholemeal bread, dark bread made from grain without a germ is also called this)
• Wholemeal pumpkin seed bread

Wholemeal wheat bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% whole wheat products
Traditional preparation: see wholemeal bread

Sorts:

• Wholemeal Chia Wheat Bread
• wheat germ bread
• Wholemeal Wheat Nut Bread
• Wholemeal wheat sourdough bread

Wholemeal rye bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% whole grain rye products, and at least two-thirds of the added acid must come from sourdough
Traditional preparation: see wholemeal bread

Sorts:

• masterpiece
• Rhenish black bread
• rye juice bread

Wholegrain oat bread or wholegrain bread with other grains

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 20% whole grain products of the “other type of grain”, a total of at least 90% whole grain products, and at least two-thirds of the added amount of acid from sourdough.
Traditional preparation: like wholemeal bread

Sorts:

• Wholemeal Oat Bread
• Wholemeal barley bread

Whole Bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% rye and wheat grist; in the case of “grain bread” in any proportion, in the case of “grained wheat rye bread” more than 50% grated wheat, and in the case of “grown rye wheat bread” more than 50% thereof grated rye.
Traditional preparation: Baked grist is coarsely chopped grain from which the seedlings have been removed before grinding. It is important here that fresh grist is processed and the dough is worked by the baker for so long and vigorously that all the peel particles can swell well. Whole bread is traditionally baked as steam chamber bread, i.e. it is steamed in tightly sealable ovens and baked for hours at a maximum baking temperature of 100 degrees. This way they don’t develop a crust and retain most of the heat-sensitive vitamins.

Sorts:

• Box bread with a rough, medium-brown crust and with sourdough
• Whole bread with spelled

Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% wheat flour
Traditional preparation: see wholemeal bread

Sorts:

• Graham bread (box bread made from fine wholemeal wheat flour without the addition of salt, yeast, sourdough, lots of protein + or little acid)
• Whole wheat bread with sourdough

Rye grist bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% rye meal
Traditional preparation: The swelling of the dough must be encouraged even more than with other wholemeal bread. The coarser the meal, the longer the dough has to swell for the bread to develop a compact crumb and the typical strong, sour taste.

Sorts:

• Brandenburg wholemeal bread
• Hamburger black bread
• Oldenburg bread

Pumpernickel

Ingredients + preparation according to DLMB: At least 90% rye meal and/or wholemeal rye meal, minimum baking time 16 hours, when making from the wholemeal meal, at least two-thirds of the added acid must come from sourdough.
Traditional preparation: steam chamber bread, see whole wheat bread

Sorts:

• Westphalian Pumpernickel (Geographically Protected)

Toast Bread

Ingredients according to DLMB:

• Toast-Bread: At least 90% wheat flour
• Wholemeal wheat toast: At least 90% whole wheat products, and at least two-thirds of any added acid must come from sourdough
• Mixed Wheat Toast: More than 50% and less than 90% wheat flour
• Mixed Rye Toast: More than 50% and less than 90% rye flour
• Wholemeal toast: At least 90% whole wheat/rye products in any proportion, added acid must be at least two-thirds sourdough

Traditional Preparation: Toast bread is baked in a loaf pan with good insulation to keep the crust soft.

Sorts:

• butter toast
• spelled toast
• Grain toast (multigrain toast)
• Raisin toast
• Hot Dog Toast

Crispbread

Ingredients + preparation according to DLMB:

Crispbread: May contain wholemeal meal, wholemeal flour, rye flour, wheat, other grains + grain mixtures, and other foods. The dried flatbread must be leavened by yeast, sourdough fermentation, and aeration by physical means or other methods, not by hot extrusion (machine pressing method). The finished crispbread must contain a maximum of 10% moisture.
Other dry flatbreads: Must meet crispbread requirements but may be made by hot extrusion.

Sorts:

• Numerous in both areas because additives can be easily introduced and kept well because of the low moisture, for example, sesame, mjölk, rye, extra thin crisp, whole grain, chia, and spelled, other flavor additives such as tomato and mozzarella, cheese and pumpkin seed, tomato, and basil.

Multi-grain bread, three-grain bread, four-grain bread, etc.

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least one type of bread grain, at least one other type of grain, and a total of three or more different types of grain, each containing at least 5%. No. 15 applies accordingly to multigrain toast and multigrain crispbread.
Traditional preparation: Depending on the predominant type of grain, the varieties result from the various group designation.

Oat bread, rice bread, cornbread, millet bread, buckwheat bread, barley bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 20% of each of the other grain types (“other” means oats and co. in contrast to the bread grains wheat, spelled and rye)
Traditional preparation depends on the variety: oat bread is traditionally baked mixed with wheat, the originally North German buckwheat bread was baked from rye, wheat, and sourdough, but is rarely sold today (more buckwheat than gluten-free food is made from corn starch, guar gum, gluten-free corn ferment, fat, sugar, yeast and a little buckwheat flour in circulation).

Spelled bread, triticale bread

Ingredients according to DLMB: At least 90% spelled/triticale products
Traditional preparation: The original traditional preparation of spelled bread was forgotten for so long that today every baker bakes his own spelled bread. From time to time this is classically spelled bread, but often also mixed spelled bread or mixed wheat bread with spelled. There is no traditional preparation for triticale bread because triticale is a relatively new hybrid of wheat and rye. Because the baking properties have proven to be rather unfavorable, hardly any pure triticale is baked, but mixed wheat or rye bread with triticale.

The guidelines define some additional information that may supplement (not replace) the (sales) designations just described and define certain properties:

• Stone oven bread: pushed or pushed (= touch in the oven) only baked on baking trays made of natural and/or artificial stone, fireclay, or other suitable non-metallic materials
• Wood-fired bread: pushed or pushed in directly fired ovens, baking chamber made of stone/stone-like material, natural wood as fuel
• Barley bread, barley bread: Pieces of dough flamed in an open fire to the characteristic speckles (= barley)
• Ham bread: Wholemeal rye bread/crushed rye bread (without ham), in a semicircular shape, pushed open/baked in a tin, particularly hearty and aromatic taste

Further ingredients

According to the principles of the German Food Book, German bread contains less than 10% fat and/or types of sugar to 90% grain and/or grain products, this applies to all German bread types.

In addition to the pure cereal bread, many special pieces of bread with other ingredients were mentioned above. For the “value-determining ingredients”

• butter
• milk
• milk protein
• buttermilk
• yogurt
• kefir
• whey
• Quark
• wheat germ
• linseed
• sesame
• sunflower seeds
• nuts
• Poppy
• other oilseeds
• Raisins/sultanas
• currants
• edible bran
• fiber concentrates
• grits

the guidelines stipulate minimum quantities if the type of bread is named after them. If other flavoring ingredients give a type of bread/bread specialty its special character, there must be enough of them in the bread for the special properties to appear “sensorially clear” or to have a nutritional-physiological value.

Incidentally, the search for small, artisanal bakeries is worthwhile in several respects: real wheat bread may get stale (bread casserole, dumplings), real rye bread a little firmer, but neither of them will go bad if stored correctly.