A Tour of the Family Bakery

Uschi, Opa, me and Marius 

This past weekend we were lucky enough to take a tour of Derek's German family's bakery. In case you didn't know, Derek's great-grandfather came to the United States from Germany and the two families have stayed in contact ever since. This past week, Derek's Opa and sister visited Germany, spending a majority of their time in Oberstenfeld, the place where Opa's father grew up and where our current German family ties reside.

On Saturday morning, we awoke very early at 5:30 am in order to tour the Nestel Bakery at 6:00. And at 6:00, the bakery was a busy hub of mixing, baking, kneading, packaging and anything else that is required for a bakery that has about six additional stores in the area. The bakery employs close to 100 people and is of course, the most popular and delicious in the area! Christian, the son of the bakery owner, gave us the tour in German with Marius as our translator. There was just so much bread! And, fun fact, the flour machine holds up to 13 tons. The bakery uses more than this each week!

My two favorite parts were:

1. Attempting to form our own pretzels. We each tried to twist the pretzel dough into the right shape. The dough comes out from a processor into the perfect piece of dough about 1.5 feet long and it must be twisted the correct way in order to look like a pretzel. Pretzel making is an art form!

2. Seeing some of our favorite breads during the baking process, specifically the Berliner and pretzel rolls.

 I'll let the photos do most of the talking. Just imagine the smell wafting through the air!

Bread waiting to be baked

More bread dough

Huge loaves of bread

If I form my arms into a circle, these loaves would be larger.

Some sort of wheat bread

Pretzel rolls before...

And after

Pretzel makers at work

Non-pretzel makers attempting to twist the dough into the shape of a pretzel. If you zoom in on mine, I'm not sure what I was doing!

Our sheet of pretzels pre-oven

And post-oven!

Berliners in the fryer

And on my breakfast plate!

Derek and Opa enjoying coffee and Berliners in the bakery's storefront

Any kind of bread you desire!

Decorative Gingerbread

And our bakery collection on the table for a second breakfast!

Look out for another post soon of our adventures with Opa and Rachel! Happy Thanksgiving to all!