About BROT

BROT

BROT — the magazine for home bakers — is Germany's specialty publication for the art of bread, published every two months by Wellhausen & Marquardt Medien in Hamburg. "Gute Rohstoffe, ein paar richtige Handgriffe und dem Teig Zeit lassen — so entsteht perfektes Brot, aromatisch und bekömmlich" (good ingredients, a few right moves, and giving the dough time — that is how perfect bread comes about, aromatic and digestible): each issue brings more than 30 recipes for wholesome, creative, tasty, and everyday-suitable breads. Beyond the recipes, every issue carries useful knowledge about ingredients, techniques, leavening agents like yeast or sourdough, the processes in dough and oven, and tips and tricks for home baking — and tells the stories of the people who live from and with bread.

Overview

BROT addresses the hobby-baking boom: the readers who bake at home, in domestic ovens, with the equipment typical of hobby bakers — and want to get better. The magazine's promise is the step-by-step path: with BROT the reader becomes, issue by issue, a successful home baker, making family, friends, and themselves happy with aromatic breads. The more than 30 recipes per issue — the bekömmliche (digestible), creative, and everyday-suitable breads — are all baked in the editorial kitchen, in home ovens, not in professional kitchens: the realistic results of home baking, not the glossy breads that look entirely different out of the reader's own oven.

The format follows the bimonthly rhythm: six issues a year, appearing every two months, available in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland at more than 6,000 press outlets — and directly from the publisher. The copy price of 5.90 euros (at launch) positions the title in the food-magazine premium segment. The app — the digital subscription giving access to all regular issues published in the app during the subscription term — extends the print reading into the digital. The BROT Fibel publications — the sourdough primer, the basic knowledge primer — supplement the magazine as the brand's booklets.

History

The magazine launched in 2017 — the Wellhausen & Marquardt Medien's bread project, with editor-in-chief Sebastian Marquardt, himself baking nearly daily for years. The launch press release framed the niche strategy: "Als Verlag sind wir spezialisiert auf Magazine für Nischenthemen. Wobei Brot eigentlich längst keine Nische mehr ist" — the publisher specialized in niche-topic magazines, though bread had long ceased to be a niche. The publisher brought in the experts: Lutz Geißler, Germany's most prominent bread developer and blogger, Stevan Paul, one of the most important food bloggers, and Valesa Schell, who runs a large bread community — the specialists contributing their knowledge alongside the editorial, accounting, and publishing teams, all of whom bake themselves.

The 1998 founding — "Eine Schnapsidee führte zur Gründung des Verlags in Hamburg" (a crazy idea led to the publisher's founding) — deserves the telling. Tom Wellhausen and Sebastian Marquardt began with the model-building magazine Trucks & Details, deciding to occupy a niche in the magazine market: the model trucks, the detailed hobby craft. The strategy proved: the own-title foundings plus the acquisitions — the kite sport in 2000 and 2006, the dolls and teddy bears in 2009 and 2010 — built the portfolio step by step. The publisher's model — the own magazines, the customer magazines, the PR and publicity work, the advertising campaigns, the internet presences, the integrated communication concepts — made the Hamburg house the niche specialist: the small, passionate readerships served with the deep content the mass titles cannot afford. BROT — the bread title — is the food-world application of the same model: the passionate home bakers, the tested recipes, the expert knowledge. The title's continuity — the 5/2026 issue of September 2026, the 6/2026 announced for late November — documents the steady bimonthly run into the present.

Coverage and Content

The editorial program has three pillars: the recipes, the knowledge, and the people. The recipes — more than 30 per issue, all tested in home ovens — cover the digestible, creative, and everyday-suitable breads: the sourdoughs, the whole grains, the regional classics, and the international flatbreads. The realism principle — showing the breads as they actually come out of domestic ovens — distinguishes the magazine from the food-glossy style. The knowledge sections explain the ingredients, the hand movements, the leavening agents — yeast, sourdough — the processes in dough and oven, and the tips and tricks: the material of bread-making made understandable, step by step.

The home-baking boom — the magazine's market context — deserves its telling. The sourdough renaissance, the pandemic baking wave, the craft-food movement: BROT rides the wave of readers who discovered — or rediscovered — the home oven. The digestibility promise — "Brot, das schmeckt 'wie früher' und das man ohne Magengrummeln isst" (bread that tastes "like in the old days" and that you eat without stomach rumbling) — addresses the modern anxiety: the industrial bread's additives, the gluten worries, the longing for the real loaf. The magazine's answer is the knowledge: understanding the fermentation, the long dough rests, the real ingredients — and the realistic results: the breads that actually come out of the reader's oven, imperfect and delicious. The people stories reinforce the craft: the millers, the bakers, the breeders — the humans behind the flour. The portraits show the craft behind the loaf: the small mills, the passionate bakers, the bread developers. The cultural dimension — the bread traditions of the world, the history of bread, the meaning of bread as cultural heritage — gives the baking its depth: the rustic whole-grain loaves to the exotic flatbreads, the magazine brings the world of bread into the reader's home. The health focus — the wholesome, digestible baking — makes BROT the companion for readers who value balanced nutrition.

Organization and Ownership

BROT is published by Wellhausen & Marquardt Medien (Wellhausen & Marquardt Medien), Hans-Henny-Jahnn-Weg 51, 22085 Hamburg. The editor-in-chief is Sebastian Marquardt — the publisher's co-founder, himself a passionate daily baker. The expert contributors — Lutz Geißler (bread development), Stevan Paul (food blogging), Valesa Schell (bread community) — bring the specialist knowledge. The publisher's structure — about 30 permanent employees, 400 regularly working authors, 8 magazines — produces the title alongside the portfolio's other niche publications. The publisher also produces customer magazines, public-relations work, advertising campaigns, internet presences, and integrated communication concepts.

The reader service — 040/42 91 77-110, service@wm-medien.de — and the publisher's site brot-magazin.de handle the subscriptions and the direct sales. The circulation and revenue figures are not publicly confirmed. The business model follows the specialty-press pattern: the copy sales at the 6,000 press outlets in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, the subscriptions (print and the app's digital subscription), the special booklets (BROT Fibel), and the advertising.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is brot-magazin.de — the magazine's site carrying the program, the subscriptions, and the shop. The app — the digital subscription within the trial subscription including access to all regular issues published in the app during the term — extends the reading digitally. The press PDF and the downloadable press images serve the media. The United Kiosk listing — the e-paper and the subscription — distributes the digital issues. The social channels and the bread communities — the expert networks around Geißler, Paul, and Schell — amplify the brand.

The digital strategy follows the niche-magazine logic: the print bimonthly for the tested recipes and the crafted reading — six issues a year at the press outlets — the app and the e-paper for the digital subscribers. As the home baker's magazine — launched 2017, steady through 2026 — BROT remains the bread art's companion: the recipes, the knowledge, and the people — every two months, in print and digital.