Knödel / Knoedel / Knedlici are NOT REALLY dumplings

Semmelknödel as I make them:

• old dry French bread (two three days after baker)
  
• egg
  
• flour
  
• maybe milk
  
  
• bacon cubes
  
• parsley
  
• pepper
  
  
• boiling salted water

Cut or rasp old bread. If you have a breakfast bowl, swirl egg (maybe milk) and pepper in bottom and add bread until it all can soak and until the bowl is full.

When it has soaked for an hour, turn down flour* - if it gets too hard add more egg or milk, too soft add more flour, until the paste is about as stiff as plasticine. Then boil.

First boil the salted water to ebullition, as they say here in France, then add the knoedels one by one, forming them with fist or big tablespoon. Each one first floats, then sinks, and when it floats up again is ready to eat.

Eaten alone or with sausages, ham, and such. Same goes for sauerkraut.

*I have - due to poverty - never done it with bacon and parsley, but if you do, add along with flour, I think.

Potato knoedel or Swedish kroppkakor:

Use mashed potatoes instead of old bread, use allspice instead of pepper. Take away parsil, add instead onion along with bacon, do not add them into dough, but make a parcel and fold dough around it. Eaten among other ways as a meal with melted butter.