Bavarians don't wait long to drink their first beer of the day. In Germany, it's known as flüssiges Brot — or "liquid bread."
By 9:50 a.m. at an establishment in Munich, one man had already finished his first half liter.
"Welcome to Bavaria!" Demetrios Kyriakides, who spent a year researching the best Bavarian breakfast joints in Munich, says.
Like most other patrons at the beer and breakfast spot, Kyriakides wore Lederhosen — his Sunday Bavarian best. He says that Weissbier — or wheat beer — helps wash down a breakfast of boiled veal sausages, sweet mustard and a giant pretzel.
Four pale, cylindrical Weisswurst arrive in a big tureen. There's two ways of eating them. One is zuzeln, which involves cutting the head off of the sausage and then just sucking the meat out. The other is the old-fashioned knife and fork. Both involve removing the sausage skin, which you are not supposed to eat.
Kyriakides says this is not just about the food, it's about Bavarian Gemütlichkeit — which describes conviviality, often accompanied by a bit of brass oom-pah-pah for good measure.
But as the Germans say, "jetzt geht's um die Wurst" — "this is now about the sausage." Meaning: "This is serious."
Master butcher Andreas Gassner agrees. Based in the city's slaughterhouse district — known as the belly of Munich — Gassner uses his grandfather's Weisswurst recipe. He says a good Weisswurst is made from veal and pork fat, which — like butter in a cake — defines the texture. Then it's seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, lemon zest and fresh parsley.
Gassner makes about 1,200 sausages a day. Even more during Oktoberfest, when they deliver 18,000 Weisswurschtl — as Bavarians call the sausages — for breakfast in the beer tents on the first weekend alone.
The trick, he says, is to try it without mustard first to get the unadulterated, full flavor profile of the sausage. He advises giving it a good sniff, too.
Traditionally, a Bavarian breakfast is eaten before the church bells strike midday — a sign that all good things must come to an end. Except for sausages because, as the German saying goes: "Alles hat eine Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei" — "everything has an end, apart from the sausage, which has two."
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