Gingerbread: where to taste it at Christmas markets

Gingerbread is a honey cake made with rye or wheat flour, flavoured with aniseed, cinnamon and cloves, baked as a loaf or as biscuits, and it is sold at the Christmas markets of Alsace, Burgundy, Champagne and Germany, cut to order or as small cut-out figures. Each region has its own school.

Alsace, Reims or Dijon gingerbread: what is on the stalls

In Alsace, Barr sells gingerbread from Gertwiller, the neighbouring village where two houses make it. Riquewihr offers it made with honey, Kaysersberg artisan-made, Turckheim with cinnamon, and Munster cuts it into storks and fir trees. In Wissembourg it calls itself German-Alsatian and sits next to Lebkuchen. Strasbourg, Eguisheim, Obernai, Sélestat, Haguenau and Molsheim have it on their stalls too.

Two other French schools: Champagne gingerbread in Reims and the gingerbread of Dijon, which comes with its honey nonnettes. Besançon flavours it with cinnamon, Auxerre with Yonne honey, and the Vosges sell it in Remiremont, La Bresse, Épinal and Plombières-les-Bains.

Where to buy gingerbread at a Christmas market

At the stall, it comes as loaves cut to order or as small cut-out figures. On the German side, Dresden sells a Saxon gingerbread, Cologne a Rhineland gingerbread, Berlin a Berlin gingerbread. Salzburg, Steyr and Bregenz in Austria, Prague, Kraków, Warsaw and Vilnius further east, Deventer and the Efteling in the Netherlands, Namur in Belgium complete the map, with Nice, Clermont-Ferrand and Orléans in France.

For the history of gingerbread, its recipe and how to recognise a good artisan loaf, read our article Pain d’épices: the brown gold of the Christmas markets.

Gingerbread in pictures