Culinary Journey: Germans know everything about bread – at least they think so …

Germans are well known for their infatuation with bread. Us Germans – and this definitely includes me – just love it and we produce so many different sorts of bread and bread rolls. This is completely incomprehensible to anyone else. Just to give you an idea: The bakery in one of LSG Sky Chefs’ facilities in Frankfurt produces about 70,000 bread rolls per day in 40 different sorts. Different dough, different size, different topping. Germans are simply crazy about bread.

So when I went to Qingdao, China, my colleagues told me that they were having a workshop on bread. I really thought they were crazy. But I took on the challenge as I was sure that they would not show me – a German – anything new. But they did.

As a German, I am into our crusty dark bread, but as a foodie I am not really into “gluten-free.” Our Executive Chef from Hong Kong, who is of Swiss nationality, had recruited a baker to show us new products. This baker presented an array of traditional German, Italian and French breads of great quality.

Then he gave all participants a muffin to taste and it was great. When I heard that this product was gluten-free, I could not believe it. He also passed around a dark, seed-crust bread, also gluten-free. And honestly, all our chefs participating in this workshop, as well as myself, had never tasted anything like this before. In the past, all gluten-free bread solutions I had tested tasted nothing like bread. But the offerings we had in China were exceptional.

Ok, the baker was from Germany, but I needed to travel to China for such a new bread experience … I never expected that.

I will share this experience with my Global Culinary Excellence Team at LSG Sky Chefs and we will think about how to bring this product to our customers.

Culinary regards,

Jörg Tüttelmann