Pinch-Decorated Flat Bread

Many Pennsylvania Dutch trace their ancestry to the Odenwald, a thickly forested region in the modern German state of Hessen. There, as in Pennsylvania, this folk bread is still baked by those few holdouts who cherish their heirloom brick bread ovens.

There is no English equivalent for Petzkuche, at least no name that is neatly translatable. In German the verb petzen means to pinch, and the distinctive patterns on the surface of this rich, crispy, buttery bread are mad