Baking your Own
In small villages in the south of Germany it is still quite common
- and it's becoming more popular again - to bake bread in a kind
of Gemeindebackereien (parish bakery). Often the village administration
runs a small Holzofen or bakery made up of one or two ovens made
from a special kind of stone. The ovens are filled with pinewood
in specific dimensions (which helps determine the exact heat). After
everything has burnt down the ashes are swept away with a broom.
This
is when the village baking event begins. All the breadmakers in
the village have made their dough at home. Everyone can make exactly
the amount of bread they need and the shape they want. Then they'll
gather at the bakery and the loaves are put into the oven with
the heated stones. The difficult thing is to place the loaves
the correct distance from each other. If you have too many or
too few loaves the heat gets out of control. Usually the bread
bakes for roughly two hours, but the baking time should actually
correspond to the gaps between the loaves. Therefore it's important
that one person is responsible for the baking.
This
is more of a social event than a culinary one, as everyone meets
up on a Saturday morning and can have a good gossip.
Normally
this village service is free, apart from a small fee of 50 Pfennig
per loaf paid to the baker.
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