Bavarian Soft Pretzels (Brezn)

The Brezn — the Bavarian soft pretzel — is the snack you picture in a Munich beer garden: a glossy, mahogany-brown knot, chewy and crisp on the outside, soft within, scattered with coarse salt. It’s the edible emblem of Bavaria and an absolute fixture of Oktoberfest, where it’s torn apart between sips of lager.

The shape looks tricky and the colour looks impossible, but both are within easy reach at home.

The alkaline bath is the secret

What makes a pretzel a pretzel — the deep brown skin, the glossy sheen, that unmistakable savoury tang — is a quick dip in an alkaline bath before baking. Bakeries use food-grade lye, but it’s caustic and fussy. A baking-soda bath is a safe, excellent stand-in, and if you bake the baking soda in a low oven first, it becomes more strongly alkaline and gets you closer still. Skip this step and you’ve made salty bread, not pretzels.

A strong, chewy dough

Use bread flour and knead it well. Pretzels want a dense, chewy crumb, not a fluffy one, so this dough is firmer than a sandwich loaf. Roll each rope thick in the belly and thin at the arms, then loop it into the classic knot — a short chill before the bath helps it hold the shape.

Salt on wet, bake hot

Slash the fat belly so it bursts open cleanly, sprinkle coarse salt while the surface is still wet from the bath so it sticks, and bake hot until deeply browned. Eat them warm, with sweet mustard or a lot of butter — and a cold beer, in proper Oktoberfest fashion.

Looking for more festival favourites? Browse the World Festive collection or the full recipe collection.