We're back from Germany (plus Salzburg!) and I'm not surprised to be writing that our food experiences were great.
Our trip started out with a visit to my husband's relatives in Bavaria, close to Munich. While there, breakfast was one of my favourite parts of our day. They had delicious coffee, a basket full of fresh bread and pretzels of several varieties every day (often there would be more fresh breads later in the day as well), a selection of sliced meats and cheeses and sometimes a jar of Nutella or jam. Some of the rolls (semmel) were topped with pumpkin or poppy seeds, and plain, sliced rye bread. There are eight bakeries in the town where we visited my husband's family!
Our first morning there we enjoyed a traditional Bavarian breakfast - Weisswurst sausages with sweet mustard (Weisswurstsenf) and pretzels. These light, almost fluffy sausages are nothing like the little fried sausages we would call breakfast sausages. Heated in water, almost to a boil, for about ten minutes, they are brought to the table in the pot of water. The skin is meant to be taken off, easily done with a sharp knife, slicing the sausage in half crossways, then down the length of the sausage, pulling the meat away from the skin. The meat is finely minced veal, pork bacon, parsley and other spices.
The third part to this breakfast trio is the wonderful pretzel. Fresh from the bakery each morning they are always served with Weisswurst.
A common way to eat this sausage is with a knife and fork, which we did. I have since read about a method, called zuzeln where the ends of the sausages are cut open and the sausage is sucked out. You can also slice the sausage crossways and peel it - but the way we were shown, described above, seems to be the easiest method.
Check back for one or two other posts about the food we tried in Germany, coming soon!
