Bavarian pretzels: a soda bath and a mahogany crust
A pretzel's dark, almost mahogany crust comes neither from long baking nor from sugar — it is made in an alkaline bath. Bakeries use food-grade lye; at home bicarbonate of soda baked in the oven does the job, becoming a considerably stronger alkali. The high pH accelerates browning so much that the pretzel darkens in a quarter of an hour, while gaining the faintly mineral taste nothing else provides.
Your own work in that: 1 h 25 min.
- Dough 75 min
- Shaping 55 min
- Bath and bake 30 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneKnead a stiff dough
Dissolve the yeast in lukewarm water with the sugar and wait 5 minutes. Add it to the flour and salt with the butter and knead 10 minutes. The dough should be stiff and stubborn, like bagel dough — soft pretzels spread in the bath and lose their shape.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 270 ml water · 5 g dried yeast · 30 g butter · 2 tsp salt · 1 tsp sugar
Stiff and stubborn, never softLet it rise an hour
Shape a ball, cover and leave somewhere warm 60 minutes, until doubled. Stiff dough rises more slowly — in a cold kitchen give it another quarter of an hour if it has not moved. Meanwhile bake the soda for the bath (see step 5), as it needs an hour in the oven.
Roll ropes with a thick middle
Divide the dough into 8 pieces of 100 g. Roll each on an unfloured counter into a 50 cm rope, thick in the middle and thin at the ends. That taper is not aesthetics: the fat belly gives a soft crumb, the thin arms bake crisp. Allow about 20 minutes for all eight ropes.
TipThe surface must be dry and unfloured — flour makes the rope slide instead of rolling. If the dough springs back, leave it 5 minutes and come back to it.
Fifty centimetres, thick in the middleShape the pretzel
Form the rope into a U, take both ends, twist them around each other twice and press them onto the thick part. Set on paper and refrigerate 30 minutes — chilled pretzels hold their shape in the bath. Meanwhile heat the oven to 220 °C.
A U, two twists, ends onto the bellyBake the soda and make the bath
Spread the bicarbonate thinly on a paper-lined tray and bake it 1 hour at 130 °C (most conveniently while the dough rises) — it converts to a stronger alkali. Dissolve it in 1.5 litres of water in a stainless steel pan (not aluminium) and bring to the boil. Dip the pretzels 30 seconds each, one at a time, and lift them out with a slotted spoon. The surface turns matt and yellowish.
Ingredients: 60 g bicarbonate of soda · 1500 ml water
TipWear gloves: a solution of baked soda is noticeably caustic to skin, though incomparably milder than the lye used in bakeries.
Thirty seconds; the surface goes mattScore, salt and bake
Set the pretzels on a tray, score along the thick belly with a sharp blade and scatter with coarse salt (or sesame on some of them). Bake 15 minutes at 220 °C, until deep brown and glossy and the score has opened. Cool on a rack; they are best within the hour.
Ingredients: 2 tbsp coarse salt · 1 tbsp sesame seeds
A score on the belly, deep brown in fifteen minutes
Before you start
Why baked soda
Ordinary bicarbonate sits at about pH 8.3; baked for an hour it reaches over 11, losing carbon dioxide and water to become sodium carbonate. That is enough for a pretzel to brown like a bakery's.
Without the bath
You can skip this stage and brush the pretzels with egg. They will taste good but come out pale and without the characteristic tang — a roll in the shape of a pretzel rather than a Bavarian pretzel.
With butter
The classic Bavarian serving: a pretzel split lengthwise with a thick layer of cold butter. Nothing else. White sausage and sweet mustard alongside if you want the full set.
Freshness
Pretzels are best on the day and go stale faster than ordinary rolls, a consequence of how little fat they contain. The next day, spray with water and give them 5 minutes at 180 °C.
