Bread and Chocolate

In Europe, the Netherlands is actually one of the biggest fans of bread. Numerous tourists who get to come by are taken aback by the assortment of the breads they find there. Generally speaking, the breakfast and lunch of their people mainly consist of bread. That said, you will not be surprised if you see the variety of bread and sandwich toppings there. “Luxury” isn’t the right term for it, “necessity” is more apt.

Usually, their breakfast consists of 2-4 slices of bread, and it actually depends on whether you would want an open or closed-face sandwich. Butter or margarine is spread onto the bread so as the toppings would stick. One sandwich has one cover that is savory, and the other one will be sweet. Dutch children usually eat the savory one first, and then the sweet sandwich which they usually have their sights on.

Given that they basically live and breathe sandwiches, they could actually be considered as masters of decorating bread toppings. Chocolate is among their favorite!

Dutch children are generous on this. They sprinkle ample amounts of chocolate flakes or ‘vlokken’ on their sandwiches, which pretty much is equivalent to half a bar of chocolate. Chocolate vlokken could either be white, milk, dark chocolate, or all three rolled into one.

Chocoladevlokken came out in the year 1955, and this was the first ever product to be used in decorating a slice of bread. After some two years, chocolate hail came out.

Story has it that after receiving some letters from a little boy asking him to come up with a chocolate bread topping, Mr. De Ruijter released chocolate sprinkles or chocolate hail. The first ads from a company called Venz featured a girl and a boy, and they were hiding themselves from a chocolate hailstorm. They had with them a slice of buttered bread, and they stuck it out from the umbrella they were hiding under.