Jürgen Krauss, semifinalist in the 2021 season of The Great British Baking Show, can’t remember his first pretzel, but that’s only because during his childhood in Germany’s Black Forest, the chewy, salted twists were almost as ubiquitous as the air he breathed.
“When you go into town, and you’re feeling snack-y, you get a buttered pretzel,” he told me on a video call from his home in Brighton, England.
Lest Krauss’s recollection inspire visions of pallid, floppy, butter-slicked twists from a mall food court, let me be clear: The German pretzel is a more noble beast, as revered in its home country as the baguette is in France. Maybe it’s the alluring chestnut exterior, with that satiny sheen and pretzel-specific mineral-y tang, all results of a quick alkaline bath before baking. Maybe it’s the fine yet satisfyingly chewy crumb. Maybe it’s the versatility: Pair a pretzel with sausage and mustard for breakfast as they do in Munich, enjoy a few with beer, or slice one horizontally and fill it with meat and cheese or simply smear it with butter.
The more I learned about German pretzels, the hungrier I became—not just to eat them, but to make them. More than anything, I was intrigued by the purportedly magical qualities of that alkaline bath and was determined to work out a plan for using it safely so that anyone could turn out these glossy, saline wonders.
Burst the Bubbles
My dough was straightforward: Bread flour (its abundant gluten-forming proteins would provide the requisite chew), yeast, and salt mixed in a stand mixer, along with a bit of softened
