@Heliograph As someone born and raised in Germany, I must point out that this alleged bread ritual "Ankenschnitt" is completely unknown here under that name. And there are no German-language sources for it on the internet, only several popular science websites in English that claim something like that exists. If anything, it's an extremely marginal and local custom. Or that name is a phonetic mistranslation. It's not common in the Harz region.