'Old bread is not hard, having no bread is'

“There was the old saying in Germany, if you have old bread, that's not hard, you could eat it. To have no bread and starving, that is hard,” says Meinolf Kraeling.

Germany has one of the highest per capita bread consumptions in the world. Auckland-based Krehling comes from a small village in the center of the country where he learned the art and science of baking.

His father established a bakery in the 1950s and it was there Krehling did his apprenticeship.

Here Now presented by Kadambari Gladding is about the journeys people make to New Zealand, their identities and perspectives, all of which shape their life here.

“I was 15, 16 years old, and then I started learning, apprenticeship. It takes three years in Germany, and then you could do your first certification. Then after another three years, you could apply for the master certification," he told RNZ's Here Now podcast.

He has cherished childhood memories of that bakery, he says.

“It was a time when I was really little and running around in the bakery, and then fresh rolls coming from the oven, and we could have them warm - hot and warm.”

In 2017 he relocated to New Zealand and bought a bakery in Glenfield, Auckland. The previous owner was also a German, so the name Diehl’s stuck.

There are about 1000 officially recognised types of breads in Germany. Each region has its own specialties, such as sourdough rye in the Black Forest, or pretzels in Bavaria.

But the staple throughout Germany is famer’s bread, he says.

“The farmer's bread was the daily bread. This is what you get at first, and it's even the best seller here [at his Auckland bakery], and also one of the most common breads in Germany from far north to south.”

The dark ryes from the north of the country are dense and long-lasting and the traditional Kommiss bread was used by the German military for hundreds of years, he says.

“It had a natural protection from mould and so if a soldier takes one of those breads, he could keep it with him in a backpack for days.

“There is this story with the French soldiers, every day needs three times a baguette and the German soldier keeps two breads for the full week.”

During the 1970s Germany’s traditional breads started to be superseded by industrialised, mass market white bread, he says.

“After the Second World War, there was almost wholegrain bread on the market, or dark ones, and then it becomes more luxury to have white bread.

The health benefits of traditional breads then had a resurgence, he says.

“To have wholegrain at home is still, until today, the best you could have for your diet.”

It was his father’s generation that understood just how precious baked-from-scratch daily bread was, he says.

“It was in the 60s, 70s, when bread becomes cheap, or people all had a good job, and earning easy money, and then old people remember ... it's in our culture, it's really important for us.

“Don't throw it away, think about, old bread is not hard. No bread is hard.”