Fine Bakery Wares

Sweet bakery products are made of grain and/or grain products, starch, fats, and sugars, and are baked. The basic recipes are enhanced by ingredients such as chocolate, food products, and nuts. Sweet bakery goods characteristically have a long shelf life and hence belong to the food category long-life bakery products.

The majority of classic sweet bakery products are made of fine doughs without yeast. Their moisture content is relatively low and the doughs are very firm. This includes baked goods made of hard biscuit doughs, where the raw dough is very firm and stretchable. The characteristic textures are formed by rolling and folding the dough. Hard biscuits are baked at particularly high temperatures for only four to five minutes. These include, for example, butter biscuits and sandwich biscuits with a chocolate coating or with a filling.

Shortbread biscuits are sold in moulded, piped, or twisted variations. The addition of chocolate chips or pieces of nuts or fruit preparations, for example, creates a variety of products and flavours. Tea biscuits are a popular type of shortbread. The term is of historical origin since it was served with tea. Today the term refers to smaller biscuits.

Sweet bakery products made of puff pastry are made using doughs without raising agents. They must have a minimum butter content of 68.3% (or the corresponding amount of milk fat products or margarine) in proportion to 100 grams of cereal product. The flaky structure is created by repeatedly rolling out and folding the dough and fat layers together. During the baking process, the fat expands between the layers of dough, creating the typical flaky layers. "Schweinsohren” (pigs ears) are a well-known sweet puff pastry.

Sweet bakery products made from whipped or stirred mixtures are preparations that are whipped, stirred till fluffy, or simply only mixed before baking, and have a lower flour or starch content. They are held together by an emulsion of eggs, fat, and sugar. Examples of such bakery products are small sponge cakes (filled or unfilled), sponge fingers, and sponge biscuits. Some of these products also contain cocoa or have a chocolate coating.

Bakery products made from waffle mixtures largely contain cereal products and liquid, together with various types of sugars, fats, and possibly egg and dairy products. One of their typical characteristics is that they can be formed when hot. For example, there are cream-filled waffles where the filling is either sandwiched between two waffle wafers or is injected into the waffle; there are also waffle rolls and waffle wafers with or without a chocolate coating.

Sweet bakery products made from gingerbread doughs (Lebkuchen) are a specialty and particularly popular in the time around Christmas. The doughs are usually made without the addition of fat and contain cereal products and/or starch, types of sugar and/or honey, and various spices and/or flavourings. Other possible ingredients are almonds, nuts, and other oilseeds or products made thereof, dairy products, eggs, and fruit and malt extract preparations.

A difference is made between Lebkuchen baked on wafers and brown Lebkuchen. They may be coated, decorated, sprinkled, iced, or filled. The wafer-based Lebkuchen include Elisenlebkuchen (made of particularly fine ingredients), nut Lebkuchen, almond Lebkuchen, macaroon Lebkuchen, and white Lebkuchen. The Lebkuchen mass is spread onto wafers and, after a light surface drying process, subsequently baked. Wafers are used in various sizes and forms as a natural baking aid in creating a wide range of biscuits, cakes, and sweet bakery wares. The wafer serves as a water reservoir: the quite viscous Lebkuchen mass is spread onto the wafer which is water-absorbing. Within the course of time it passes this moisture back to the Lebkuchen, keeping the Lebkuchen core soft and fresh. The Elisenlebkuchen is considered to be the finest wafer-based Lebkuchen: the dough has a particularly high nut content of 25%, the nuts consisting of almonds, walnuts, or hazelnuts; the maximum cereal product content is 10% and the maximum starch content is 7.5%.

Brown Lebkuchen are not spread on wafers. They include "Printen” (old-fashioned Christmas Lebkuchen cookies), dominos, "Spitzkuchen” (usually triangular, but also diamond-shaped, pieces of Lebkuchen with nuts and possibly raisins, dipped in chocolate), Lebkuchen hearts, and "Pfeffernüsse” (small round Lebkuchen biscuits). Brown Lebkuchen are a little harder to begin with and become softer by being stored properly in cool rooms at low air-humidity levels.