More Holiday Fun

This weekend there was another... Festival!  You guessed it!  Since Germans don't have Thanksgiving as a "marker" for the start of the Christmas season, November 1st began all the Christmas preparation.  (I guess in the States they start pretty early too...)  Right outside our apartment are the beginnings of the Striezelmarkt, an annual Christmas Market.  The whole thing (Weihnachtsmarkt) runs from the Neustadt past our apartment all the way to the main train station.  I couldn't believe it when they started constructing some of the houses the other day.  But, being that its the 576th year of Christmas Market and that its such a big deal here, I guess I could see it taking a month to set up (it opens Nov. 26th).

To kick of the holiday season, a nearby town (Pulsnitz) celebrated with a Pfefferkuchenmarkt (or Gingerbread Festival).  Again, the weather was cold and rainy, but nothing was going to stop me from going to a festival that celebrates my favorite holiday food!

It was a lot of shopping and a lot of Gingerbread.  Here I am standing in line at one of the best Gingerbread Bakeries where I bought gingerbread, of course.

The gingerbread festival had the usual festival stands (bratwurst, wooden crafts, socks, etc.) but there were also a lot of exciting "Gingerbread-y" items to try like Pfefferkuchen Bratwurst and Pfefferkuchen Glühwein (I'll do a whole post sometime about glühwein, but just know that it is the best Christmas drink ever!)

The coolest part about the Pfefferkuchenmarkt were a bakery showroom where we got to see some of the Gingerbread being made and the museum where we learned all about making Gingerbread (in German, of course)

Some Gingerbread "cutters"

Gingerbread in the oven

Gingerbread "resting"

 

Gingerbread Spices

Some Alpine horn players

The making of Gingerbread is fascinating.  It used to be 1/2 flour (with spices) and half honey.   Now they use sugar, but there are never any eggs or milk in the dough.

There are 10 different spices in Gingerbread.  

When the dough is made, every day each family bakery saves a piece of dough from the gingerbread batch in a box (under lock and key).  The next day, that little bit is mixed into the new batch of gingerbread, so really, each piece of gingerbread has molecules of 125 year old dough in it (yum!).

Another interesting fact is that the dough must rest for three months!  During that time some bacteria (sort of like yeast) form and cause the dough to rise a bit in the oven.  

German gingerbread is definitely very different than the gingerbread I'm used to, but it's fantastic!  I almost had to be rolled home I ate so much!!