Learn how lye pretzels are made
Overview of how lye pretzels are made.
Contunico © ZDF Enterprises GmbH, Mainz
Transcript
NARRATOR: The typical pretzel shape. Baked crispy and golden-brown, with small bits of salt on top - everyone knows this savoury snack. A soft pretzel tops the scales at one gram and its special flavour makes it a popular treat. The recipe is simple. You need only a bit of dough, lye and salt. In 30 minutes 100 kilograms of dough is turned into 30,000 little pretzels. Fat, flour, soy flour, malt, salt and water are the main ingredients in this baked treat.
INTERVIEWER [translation]: "Mr Kummer, are there any discrepancies as far as flavour is concerned?"
WOLFGANG KUMMER [translation]: "We have no discrepancies, we use a set recipe, anything else would put our always reliable quality standards at risk."
NARRATOR: The ingredients are mixed in a mixing machine. Flour is added last. Then it's all kneaded for six minutes until you end up with firm dough. The dough is then sent to the baking line, where a series of rollers form it into a thin cylindrical strip. When the strip is thin enough, the many meters of dough are cut into small pretzels. Everything is done mechanically. A steel rolling pin makes sure the little snacks are uniform in shape. That wasn't always the case.
WILLI MAYER: "If you consider that 50 or 60 years ago, women still rolled out the dough and tied the pretzels by hand."
INTERVIEWER: "Unfathomable today?"
MAYER: "Unfathomable, that's right."
NARRATOR: Almost no dough goes to waste. The excess is sent back to the beginning of the baking line and rolled out once more. So, the shape is correct. But, to give them that typical flavour, the pretzels are sent to a lye bath to top things off.
MAYER: "This is baking soda lye, it is what makes the pretzel what it is, a lye pastry."
INTERVIEWER: "Yes, and if it weren't for this lye brew?"
MAYER: "Then it would be white and would have no flavour at all, no one would buy it."
NARRATOR: Most important: salt. A machine spreads large kernel table salt on the almost finished pretzels before they are put in the oven. The pastry sizzles in the oven for 3.7 minutes at 240 degrees centigrade. The workers watch and record each step in the production chain from afar. The pretzels finally come out of the oven golden-brown. Whether as a snack at a party or a between-meal treat, soft pretzels taste great and have been going strong for 30 years.
MAYER: "I have been doing this job for 30 years and my favorite part is still sampling the pretzels."
NARRATOR: We sure would like to try one now, too. Simply delectable, these little pretzels.
INTERVIEWER [translation]: "Mr Kummer, are there any discrepancies as far as flavour is concerned?"
WOLFGANG KUMMER [translation]: "We have no discrepancies, we use a set recipe, anything else would put our always reliable quality standards at risk."
NARRATOR: The ingredients are mixed in a mixing machine. Flour is added last. Then it's all kneaded for six minutes until you end up with firm dough. The dough is then sent to the baking line, where a series of rollers form it into a thin cylindrical strip. When the strip is thin enough, the many meters of dough are cut into small pretzels. Everything is done mechanically. A steel rolling pin makes sure the little snacks are uniform in shape. That wasn't always the case.
WILLI MAYER: "If you consider that 50 or 60 years ago, women still rolled out the dough and tied the pretzels by hand."
INTERVIEWER: "Unfathomable today?"
MAYER: "Unfathomable, that's right."
NARRATOR: Almost no dough goes to waste. The excess is sent back to the beginning of the baking line and rolled out once more. So, the shape is correct. But, to give them that typical flavour, the pretzels are sent to a lye bath to top things off.
MAYER: "This is baking soda lye, it is what makes the pretzel what it is, a lye pastry."
INTERVIEWER: "Yes, and if it weren't for this lye brew?"
MAYER: "Then it would be white and would have no flavour at all, no one would buy it."
NARRATOR: Most important: salt. A machine spreads large kernel table salt on the almost finished pretzels before they are put in the oven. The pastry sizzles in the oven for 3.7 minutes at 240 degrees centigrade. The workers watch and record each step in the production chain from afar. The pretzels finally come out of the oven golden-brown. Whether as a snack at a party or a between-meal treat, soft pretzels taste great and have been going strong for 30 years.
MAYER: "I have been doing this job for 30 years and my favorite part is still sampling the pretzels."
NARRATOR: We sure would like to try one now, too. Simply delectable, these little pretzels.