Weizenbrötchen

Weizenbrötchen are the weekday roll and the Sunday breakfast roll, the thing you send a child to the bakery for before the eggs are boiled. In Berlin they may call it a Schrippe, in Hamburg a Rundstück, in the south a Semmel or Weck. Same table, different names. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders, and nobody needs a beer tent to explain bread.

I make these with Type 550 wheat flour, water, yeast, salt, and a little malt or honey to help the crust colour. The dough is plain because the roll is plain. That is the point. The work is in the fermentation and the oven, not in adding things.

The one technique that decides the roll is the hot start with steam. Steam keeps the surface of the dough soft for the first minutes, so the roll can spring and split where you cut it; dry heat too early seals the skin and gives you a tight little stone. Then you vent the oven and finish dry, because a crust that stays wet never turns crisp. Erst verstehen, dann kochen.

Shape them firmly, score them cleanly, bake them hard. Eat them with butter, jam, cheese, cold cuts, or a boiled egg. Weggeworfen wird nichts: stale ones become Semmelbrösel, breadcrumbs, or the bread for Semmelknödel, bread dumplings.