Sesambrötchen

Bäckerei Middelberg, a chain with branches across North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony, sells its sesame roll filled five ways: boiled egg, cooked ham, turkey breast, raw ham or salami, each listed as Der Middelberger. The roll underneath is a small wheat Brötchen whose top was pressed into sesame before it went into the oven. Behind the glass the speckled pale-gold cap marks which basket it came from. Up close the seeds have roasted a shade darker than the shell beneath them, and a fresh tray smells of toasted nuts with a slight bitter edge at the finish.

The seeds decide how the roll eats, and they have their own ways of going wrong. A crust that dried before the dip sheds them into the basket, and one that stayed wet gums them into a paste. An oven that ran cool leaves them pale and raw-tasting, and one that ran long turns them acrid. A good roll cracks open with a dry rattle at the top, gives way to a soft, faintly sweet crumb, and leaves loose seeds on the plate and in the lap. Butter softens against the warm crumb, and the filling goes in last, so the shell stays crisp for the first bites.

Each filling meets the sesame differently. Cooked ham brings salt against the seed's oil, and salami adds fat and pepper that the roasted top answers with bitterness. Raw ham is chewier and sweeter, and turkey breast stays mild enough that the nutty crust carries the flavor. A sliced boiled egg turns the crumb soft and slightly sulfurous, and the seeds cut through that. All five sit on the same roll, so the choice at the counter comes down to how much salt and fat the customer wants against the seeds.

The same Der Middelberger names run across four rolls in the range: the sesame roll, a Mohnbrötchen topped with poppy seeds, a rye Röggelchen and a Mehrkornbrötchen. Poppy tastes earthier and drier than sesame, and the grain roll carries its seeds through the crumb. Elsewhere in the Middelberg range a pumpkin-seed roll called the Kürbis-Knacker takes bacon or cheese. Austrian bakeries sell the sesame roll as a Semmel mit Sesam, and Swiss ones as a Weggli mit Sesam, so the filled version crosses the border under two other names and keeps the same speckled cap.

The roll belongs to the morning counter. By evening the shell has gone leathery and the seeds have softened with it, so a Middelberg sesame roll is bought the day it was baked, like the rest of the Brötchen basket, and a roll left in a paper bag until lunch loses its crackle. On Norderney the branch at Jann-Berghaus-Straße 66 lists it plain and filled with egg, cooked ham, turkey, raw ham and salami. Bakers outside the filled-roll trade split the same roll for butter with jam or honey, and some use it as a burger bun or a side for soup.

Origin and history: the sesame roll at the counter

No record dates the first sesame roll in a German bakery. A reference lexicon of baked goods calls Sesambrötchen a fixed part of the German bakery assortment for decades, and the seed itself has been cultivated in Africa and India for thousands of years and is at home around the Mediterranean.

The filled version is easier to place. Bäckerei Wilhelm Middelberg began as a family bakery in Glandorf near Osnabrück. Its counters list Der Middelberger on sesame, poppy, rye and multigrain rolls, with the sesame roll taking boiled egg, cooked ham, turkey breast, raw ham or salami.

Middelberg prints "seit 1897" under its name, which dates the Glandorf bakery to the final years of the 19th century, and the sesame roll with cooked ham that a customer on Norderney buys today comes from that same company.