It came to me amid an exchange of e-mails with a fellow Sheboyganite.

         I forget what the original subject was, but the conversation eventually turned to food and favorite hometown haunts.    I mentioned a favorite steak sandwich joint (Schultz's, on Calumet Drive) and he fired back about a place that offers ginormous sandwiches served on a traditional Sheboygan hard roll.

         Ah, yes.      It's not meat.     It's the potion--the one that creates the semmel roll that seems to be unique to Sheboygan.

         It's what makes a brat fried and served in Sheboygan taste unique.      It's what sets one of my hometown burgers or steak sandwiches apart from any other served around the planet.       It's all about the bun.

        Everyone has a favorite brand of sausage--I've found plenty on the shelves of local stores that fill the bill (although there are still Sheboygan natives who'll drive back home to buy their favorites at their super-secret markets.     Mine--Luedke's--closed years ago).    I hope they also stock up on the rolls, because otherwise they're just wasting gas.

        I have yet to find semmels here the way they're baked in Sheboygan.      Shaped like a hamburger bun, the rolls have a distinct cleft in the middle and a dusting of rye flour over the top.      The stand tall, and can hold their own against the greasiest pair of sausage (in Sheboygan, brats are eaten two at a time--"a double" in local parlance) and a sea of condiments.     

           The brown crown can be crackly--hence the nickname "hard roll"--and all have just the right amount of tug, requiring just a bit of a twist of the wrist (and a crane of the neck) to separate the bite between your teeth from the rest of your dinner.      The taste and texture are unique, indescribable and definitely better than that which is called a "brat bun" throughout the rest of the world.        Nothing more than a glorified hot dog holder, if you ask me, and not worthy of a well-grilled brat.

        In fact, good Sheboygan brats are probably easier to procure now than ever before--Johnsonville is global, and spreads the good sausage word to whoever will listen.       Others are following suit.      The semmel roll, sadly, has yet to get such legs.

      There are Internet recipes for the buns, but I haven't tried them.      I can cook, but as anyone who ever spent time in a kitchen knows, baking is HARD.       Plus, I doubt whatever I pulled from my oven would match the offerings that come from the corner bakeries that dot my hometown (there used to be a City, a West Side and a Johnson's, if memory serves--I don't know who's still around).       In high school, part of my job at the local grocery store was to spend a good chunk of Saturday morning bagging up semmels in six and 12 roll servings, divided by bakery, all for the weekend crunch when it seemed every Sheboygan backyard sported a smoking grill.          Semmels could even make routine baloney taste like the finest steak.     

       No, the Sheboygan hard roll isn't reserved solely for the city's signature link: any local joint worth it's salt shaker serves it's steak sandwiches and hamburgers on them.               The Schultz's sandwich  I referenced before is like most served at local restaurants and bars--a fried cube steak served up on semmel with a generous dollop of butter on top.         You'd have to sprint home if you were bringing home a sack of them for supper, since the bottom of the bag would often succumb to the ocean of melted residue that would seep through.         Pfizer has yet to make an anti-cholesterol med that than undue the damage of a steady diet of those bad boys.    

       Maybe it's the cold that has me dreaming of those warm summer nights when I've got a grillful of brats turning brown on the deck--the smoke gently wafting skyward while I tend the coals, frosty beverage in one hand and greasy fingers at the ready (Sheboygan brat grillers don't use tongs--we dip our fingers in cold water and turn the links barehanded, the better to know when the casings are tight and the meat is done).         With temps hard pressed to crack zero and a yard-deep crust covering my backyard Weber, such days don't just seem far away--they feel like the stuff of another planet.

        If you know of a Milwaukee area place with quality semmel rolls--trust me, I'm fussy--I'd love to hear about it at mueller@620wtmj.com.      And, if you're adventurous enough to try a hard roll recipe on your own, I found this one on the web (as well as this one).      I haven't tried it, so I can't vouch for the quality.    I'm guessing it has to be better than what we limp by with now.

        (A quick Google search generated this New York Times story about the Sheboygan brat tradition--ignore the prices, since the story is 19 years old, and some of the markets mentioned (my beloved Luedke's, for one) may either be gone or in a different location (Masefeld's now has a huge complex on the Sheboygan city limits).