Food: part bread

Oh bread, bread, how I love thee, let me count the ways.  The bread here is something I am definitely going to miss when I get back to the states, Kenny too.  He doesn't eat quite as much now, but when we first arrived it seemed two out of three of his meals were bread and jam. 
   Kenny wants me to point out that there are over 200 varieties of bread in Switzerland. He learned that in one of his classes.  The teacher that told him this brought in a BUNCH of different kinds for the students to sample. I think that was a good day for him.
   The vast majority of bread sold here is not sliced bread- it is whole loaves or small buns/rolls. They do have sliced bread, labeled as toast. I've also seen "American style" hamburger buns, but I've never bought them so I don't know how they are. 
   Similar to the cheeses here, every locale seems to have its own bread. So I can get Alperbrot, or St. Gallerbrot (that would be the local variety) or tessinorbrot from the Italian area of Switzerland.

One of my favorites is the little silzerbrotli. Kind of a pretzel bread.

 I also really like sonnenbrot, which I believe has some component of sunflower seeds- meal? flour?  There weren't any big seeds. Not sure.

 

 The traditional breakfast bread is a gipfel- you would call it a croissant (Kenny says there is a difference).

Butterzopf, Kenny tells me is the weekend bread, and I have noticed that it is on sale every Friday. This one has almond flavoring.  Sorry about the pictures. I kept eating stuff before remembering I wanted to take a picture

There are some holiday breads. This is a Tiegmannli. It's a little bit sweet. Kenny and I wanted to take a second picture of this guy- sort of an after the battle shot, limbs missing, chocolate sauce oozing out. Didn't get it done.

What else can I say about the bread...it goes stale pretty quick- less/no preservatives. (Fruit and veggies go bad faster here, too. And there is evidence of actually having grown- dirt in the lettuce!  a caterpillar on the broccoli! I do not mind)
  Have you ever noticed a funny taste to the "fresh baked" loaves from the local grocery stores (in Effingham)? I don't taste that here. Yes, I will miss my European bread.* tear*