Bread baking enjoys a renaissance in Vienna.

There are more and more bakeries in Vienna using organic ingredients and baking bread by hand. At least since the organic wood-oven bakery Gragger & Cie opened in the 1st district in 2010, the Viennese have known what it means to queue for bread.

Bread pioneer

At the vanguard of the new bread culture in Vienna is Dieter Smolle. For the last 12 years he has been making bread in the Kornradl in the passage between Lerchenfelder Strasse and Neustiftgasse using only organic Demeter ingredients. Demeter is the brand name for products grown using biodynamic methods. Customers can watch Smolle at work in the small, one‑room bakery as he grinds the flour, kneads the dough and bakes and sells the bread.
One of the two Kaschik-Demeter-Brot outlets is found in Lange Gasse on the other side of Lerchenfelder Strasse.

Josef Weghaupt’s branch in the city centre also sells 100 per cent Demeter bread made exclusively by hand. Apart from classic bread types “Joseph – Brot vom Pheinsten” also offers specialities like organic rye, honey and lavender bread.

Organic bread is also to be found in the Naschmarkt. The wholefood bakery Waldherr and the organic wholefood bakery Gradwohl both offer special types for allergy sufferers.
 

Turkish bread

The fragrance of simit sesame rings, sweet baklava and fresh flatbread is all around. One third of the 130 bakeries in Vienna are run by Turkish migrants. In fact it is the Turks who are said to have introduced croissants to Vienna. Many of these bakeries are family-run operations open round the clock – like Hüseyin Kilic’s wood-oven bakery Trabzon at the Brunnenmarkt.

Mühldorf-Wachau Bakery Museum

The bakery museum in Mühldorf is a real insider’s tip. Records of a bakery on the site go back to 1625. The most impressive exhibit is a seventeenth-century clay oven, which can still be used today.
INFO: 2/May–31/Oct, daily except Thu and holidays 15:00–18:00, guided tours 16:00
3622 Mühldorf, Markt 14.www.baeckereimuseum.at