SCHWANTE, Germany — "It's a sense of home," German master baker Karl-Dietmar Plentz muses, dipping his hands into a tray of flour and letting it run through his fingers as 26 types of bread bake in the ovens of his 136-year-old family business.
Behind him a worker deftly kneads two pieces of dough into identical loaves, one in each hand, as they roll off a cutting machine. They belong to a batch of 'potato bread', one of Plentz's specialities that is still partly made the way his grandfather did it.
German bakers are calling for their breadmaking to be recognised by the United Nations' cultural organisation, UNESCO, as "intangible cultural heritage", alongside Argentina's tango, carpet weaving from southwest Iran and France's four-course gastronomic meal.
Pondering why Germany's rich assortment of bread should be considered a global cultural asset, Plentz, a 46-year-old fourth generation baker from northeastern Germany who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, says "individuality" is important.
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