Rolls

Breakfast rolls are a big deal in Berlin. The proper morning pre-breakfast pilgrimage is to the local bakery to get fresh rolls. The cheapest are Schrippe at 0.15 €. They are a light and very crusty white bread, the sort that takes butter and jelly with remarkable ease, but can also be served at lunch (or breakfast) with very thin slices of sausage or cheese (and some tomato or cucumber). I doubt whether they could ever be classified as a health food.

Brötchen (little breads) is the more generic word that covers a far broader range of types than I remember from 30+ years ago. Brötchen with sesame or poppy seed have long been common, but the whole wheat varieties with sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds or other healthful nut-like products seem to have pushed the older white-bread types out of the front ranks. Those health-brötchen are not quite as crusty, but equally good. They cost more: 0.30 € at ordinary bakeries and as much as 0.70 € at real health-food stores.

Bread is not quite as protected by purity laws as beer, which is good because the laws would probably never have allowed adulteration with foreign substances like pumpkin seeds. But I doubt whether any self-respecting German bread has much by way of unnatural preservatives in it. Loaves and rolls do not last. One really has no choice except to eat them as quickls and completely as possible.