Life: Idiotropic

This weekend Gillrath celebrated it's annual "Brotfest" where a family on Schleifweg fires up the 150 year old stone oven and bakes obstfladen and frische brot.

It's a local event with most of the town turning out. On Saturday they had more than 120 people show up at the little farm to crowd into the white canopied event tent by the oven house to drink beer, eat fladen, and grab loaves of freshly baked bread to take home.

On Sunday, we walked up there to see what was going on and to try a piece of the best obstfladen that I've ever tasted - a benefit, may be, of the stone oven? For 1 Euro, we got a generous piece of what is quite similar to pie - a nice cherry fladen with a generous streusel topping. It was still hot from the oven and falling apart on my fork, but absolutely delicious with my small cup of coffee.

The girls ran around with friends, one of whom caught a darling quarter sized red frog which she kindly brought over to the table to show us as we all ate our pie.

The bread had sold out the day before, so we waited and waited for today's batch. I took a photo of the uncooked bread as it waited for the ovens to heat - they bake the bread differently in the ovens than they bake the fladen for some reason. I eventually gave up, but our friends brought us a piece of sweet braided bread that evening - black.

Once we pealed off the thick black top, the inside was soft, sweet, and delicious.

The event itself was fun. It was nice to see the entire community come and participate. I'm sure the Bitburger beer tent helped. And, although it was Sunday, the tent was still quite busy at 7pm when we drove by again. People will celebrate just about anything here - especially where there is food and beer involved.

Photos: From top to bottom, L to R -- The 150 year old brick oven set inside a small brick house just big enough for the oven itself and a few people in front putting wood inside of it -- A young boy wearing an event t-shirt "historisches backhaus" -- Obstfladen or "pies" in cherry, apple, and apricot. Some had pudding inside. Some had sugar toppings or streusel instead of the traditional lattice top. -- The unbaked, not yet burned bread. -- The event tent with Bitburger stand to the right -- Two hot air balloons just to the right of two colored event lightbulbs strung out for decoration and lit up in the evenings.