GERMANY: Buy a pretzel in Germany, and it most probably won’t come with mustard unless you’ve ordered a sausage to go along with it. Instead, it might be served sliced in half with butter, or with some obazda, a cheese-based dip made with an unusual combination of ingredients (recipe below). It’s also most probably been dipped in a lye solution just prior to baking, (which is what gives pretzels their charteristic deep mahagony color), but baking soda works too.

I’ve listed the ingredients below; the video has all the instruction you need! I love his opening line, “Oktoberfest is cancelled, but Pretzels aren’t!”, and haven’t come across this lead-in before: “Learn how to make home made soft pretzels (Bavarian Style Brezen) at home without using any dangerous substances.” Ha!

• 500g bread flour (all purpose is fine)
• 7g yeast
• 15g baking malt (if you have it, it’s often already incorporated in the all purpose flour)
• 10g salt
• 30g softened butter
• 300ml Bavarian white beer (Helles), other beer or water
• rock salt
• 1.5 litres water
• 50g baking soda (soda!! not powder!!)

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