As an Oktoberfest enthusiast, I’m extremely excited to have perfected my Oktoberfest pretzels recipe. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know I have a bit of a Bavarian pretzel passion.
At the bottom of this post is a printable recipe card for you. It covers the ingredients and basic steps of this Oktoberfest pretzels recipe but check back to this post for all the details.
What I don’t have, however, is… whatever you’d call a ‘green thumb’ in cooking terms. My kitchen personality is nothing short of Steve Urkel in an apron. I burn it, I break it, I drop it. Let’s just say, a lot of four-letter words and fire alarms go into every single thing I make. Did I do that?
So… why should you take cooking advice from me? Why on earth am I sharing an Oktoberfest pretzels recipe like I know what I’m talking about?
My Oktoberfest pretzels recipe
Well. I might not be a great cook, host a lot of dinner parties, or run a successful food blog, but as my therapist would tell you I am extremely Type-A with a full serving of perfectionist tendencies and a dash of Oktoberfest obsession. With a background in biochemistry. You better believe I analyzed 45 different soft pretzel recipes… then built my own using the most logical structure and the laws of physics, biology, and organic chemistry.
I may not take the sexiest product pics or be able to regale you with fancy food words, but I sure as hell know a thing or two about Bavarian soft pretzels. Don’t get your Oktoberfest pretzels recipe from “stay-at-home chefs” or mommy bloggers. Get them from the girl whose blood type is Dough+ and who spends more time eating pretzels each year than you do at meetings that could’ve been emails.
Pro tip: For optimal results, listen to my authentic Oktoberfest playlist while you’re baking Bavarian soft pretzels. It’s the perfect accompaniment!
Simple and safe ingredients
Because I’m someone who honestly shouldn’t touch a kitchen with a 10-foot pole, I put my Oktoberfest pretzels recipe together using only the simplest ingredients and most basic tools. Authentic Bavarian soft pretzels should be available to everyone! Keep this one handy for when you host an Oktoberfest-themed party.
Therefore, you won’t find any fancy dough mixers or dangerous lye in this recipe. The last thing I need in my kitchen is a chemical that will boil my eyes out of their sockets and burn the skin off my bones. I prefer to maintain an optional hazmat suit policy in my kitchen, not a mandatory one. You’re welcome.
Baking Bavarian soft pretzels at home
This Oktoberfest pretzels recipe uses (mostly) simple ingredients that you (probably) already have in your kitchen. The process isn’t difficult and even the novices in the group can make these. (I should know.)
In it, we sub our own two hands for expert equipment and baking soda for caustic lye—an ingredient in many-a pretzel recipe. If you can use it as a drain cleaner or to dissolve a body, I’m not attempting to cook with it, simple as that. Mixing hot water and yeast is about as Breaking Bad as I’ll go.
Pro tip: If you can’t find yeast at your typical grocery store, check your local breweries. Many of them sell baking ingredients like yeast, flour, and more. That’s where I got mine!
Tools you’ll need
This Oktoberfest pretzels recipe requires very few technical tools—literally the most important ones are your own hands. You’ll also need:
- Measuring spoons and cups
- Large mixing bowl
- Baking sheets
- Thin towel
- Large pot
- Saucepan or ramekin for melting butter
- Sharp knife or pizza cutter
- Small brush
- Whisk or fork
- Parchment paper
- Slotted spoon, spatula, or spider strainer
- An oven
- Stand mixer with dough hook – optional
Also check out: After you make these pretzels, check out this post on more great Oktoberfest recipes you can make at home.
Ingredients
Most of these necessary pretzel ingredients you probably already have at home, especially if you’re the kind of person interested in baking in the first place. Here’s what you’ll need to bake some Bavarian pretzels:
To make the dough:
- ¾ cup warm water
- ¾ cup warm milk
- 1 tbsp malt extract or brown sugar, you can even use white sugar if you don’t have one of the other two.
- 2 ¼ tsp of active dry yeast (this usually equates to one packet)
- 4 ½ cups flour
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 2 oz unsalted butter, melted
- 1 tbsp oil or cooking spray
- Coarse salt for topping
For the baking soda bath:
- 9 cups water
- ½ cup baking soda
For the egg wash:
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cold water
How to bake soft Oktoberfest pretzels
Alright, let’s get to it! Put on your safety goggles, pull out the fire extinguisher, and get 9-1-1 on stand-by, it’s time to bake.
Prep the yeast
Here’s some stuff you need to know about cooking with yeast: warm water is what wakes the yeast from its slumber and encourages it to get to work eating the sugar you’re going to add. When yeast eats sugar it releases CO2 in the form of little bubbles (or, if you’re 8 years old like me, “yeast farts”). It’s these bubbles that make the dough rise.
Yeast won’t wake up for cold water (would you?) and hot water may kill it. There, you’ve just been #scienced. You can use your best judgment to decide what “warm” water is or, if you’ve got a kitchen thermometer, get it to about 105° – 110°F.
Step 1: Mix the warm water, warm milk, and malt extract (or sugar) in a large bowl, lightly whisk.
Malt extract is a sweetener commonly used for brewing beer in place of regular ol’ sugar. It’s the result of adding malted barley to hot water which converts its starches into sugars. The sugary liquid is strained from the leftover grain then evaporated into a concentrated syrup or dehydrated into a fine powder. That syrup/powder is malt extract. I prefer to use this over common sugar because the closer my pretzels are to being simply the edible form of beer, the better. You can buy malt extract at homebrew supply stores or on Amazon.
Step 2: Sprinkle the yeast into the mixture, lightly whisk again, and set aside in a warm spot for about 10 minutes. The now wide awake and hungry yeast will get to work on the sugar (nom nom nom) and create a foamy/bubbly liquid.
Melt the butter
Step 3: While the yeast mixture is bubbling away, melt 2 ounces of unsalted butter over low heat (or in the microwave using the “melt” function because my husband just told me that was a thing). Two ounces is half a stick a butter, just FYI.
Prepare the dough
Step 4: After the yeast mixture is sufficiently bubbly, add in the flour, 2 tsp kosher salt, and melted butter. Lightly stir to mix ingredients.
Step 5: Knead this mixture with your hands until it becomes a soft, stretchy ball of dough that’s not incredibly sticky. If your dough is too gooey, add a little more flour. If your dough is too tough, add a little more water. This may be science, but it’s not rocket science.
If you own a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment, you can use that to knead the dough instead of using your hands. But you already knew that because you’re the kind of person who owns a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment.
Step 6: Once your dough ball is absolute perfection or whatever normal people tolerate as being “good enough,” very lightly oil the inside of another large bowl and add the dough. Cover with a kitchen towel and set aside in a warm spot to rise. Let sit for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. (I sit mine on a sunny window sill because my life is nothing if not a Looney Tunes cartoon.)
Form the pretzels
Step 7: Dump the dough out onto a clean surface and punch it down. Literally, just punch it with your fist to pop all the air bubbles. I’m not saying this is the funnest part of baking pretzels… but I’m not saying it’s the worst either.
Step 8: Form the dough into a uniform log and, using a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut into 8 equally sized pieces for big pretzels, 10 pieces for medium pretzels, or 12 pieces for smaller ones. I say, go big or go home. Even though we’re already at home. How about, given the current climate, I’ll say “Go big and stay home.”
Step 9: Take each piece and roll out into a long individual strand of dough, keeping them fatter in the middle and tapered at the ends. At this point you’ll put your personal preferences to work. Some like chubby little round pretzels but I prefer ridiculously oversized Oktoberfest-style shapes. For this, I roll out dough strands 30 inches long before I pretzel them.
How to make the pretzel shape
To make a pretzel, lay your long dough strand down in a horseshoe shape and cross the arms. Now cross them again. Now, take the ends and flip them over, pressing them into the fat arms of the pretzel. See below
Step 10: After you’ve formed the pretzel, set each one aside on a parchment-lined baking sheet for 30 minutes at room temperature (to rise some more—hungry, hungry yeast). Then, move to the refrigerator for an hour. (This will help the pretzel keep its shape through step 11.)
Important note: No, you cannot use wax paper here. You must use parchment paper. In the oven, the wax on wax paper will melt and the paper could catch on fire. And no, I did not learn this the hard way thankyouverymuch.
Baking soda bath
Step 11: Bring 9 cups of water to a rolling boil, add ½ cup baking soda and reduce the heat a little bit, just to maintain some kind of order here. When you add the baking soda the water will bubble and steam like crazy but it’ll calm down in a jiffy.
The baking soda bath replaces what would be a lye bath, if we were clinically insane. This process results in what is known as a Maillard reaction—what gives the pretzels their golden brown color and chewy, signature pretzel crust. The Maillard reaction is also responsible for bagels, toasted marshmallows, seared steaks, and—get this—malting barley, among many other things.
Step 12: Lightly place each pretzel, one at a time, into the baking soda bath using a slotted spoon/spatula/spider strainer (which I really hope was named for its web-like design and not because they anticipate me needing to strain spiders from my soups).
Let boil for about 30 seconds. Carefully remove (them’s slippery little boogers), let the water drip off, and put back on the parchment paper. They’ll probably need to be reshaped a little.
Important note: For the massive pretzels I tend to make, a big enough spatula does not exist. I use two, one in each hand like a baby attempting chopsticks for the first time. It’s hella awkward.
Prepare the pretzels for cooking
Step 13: Beat together 1 large egg yolk and 1 tablespoon of cold water in a small bowl. Brush the egg wash lightly onto the surface of each pretzel. (You could also just use your fingers if you don’t have a basting brush.) Like the baking soda bath, the egg wash helps with the browning of the pretzel and also enhances shine.
Sprinkle with pretzel salt, kosher salt, or some other kind of coarse salt. If you wish, make a deep slice in the fattest part with a sharp knife just before putting them in the oven.
Pro tip: In place of egg wash and salt, you can also brush them with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar for a deliciously sweet Oktoberfest treat. (At Oktoberfest, I start my mornings with a sugar pretzel.) Looking for something else sweet? Check out my dampfnudel recipe for an awesome Oktoberfest dessert.
Bake the pretzels
Step 14: Bake at 450°F for about 10-12 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. Obviously ovens vary so keep an eye on them. Mine takes about a year to preheat, so there’s that. I’mma just say it’s better to undercook them than to overcook them.
Important note: If you put multiple baking sheets of pretzels in the oven at the same time, you may need to rotate between racks, or leave the ones on the lower rack in there a couple minutes longer. You are totally the judge here.
Enjoy!
Step 15: Serve your delicious Oktoberfest pretzels with a good German beer and some great German mustard. I prefer mine sweet and spicy. Bonus points for eating them in a dirndl–here’s where you can buy one. Prost!
Bavarian Oktoberfest Pretzels Recipe
These Bavarian soft pretzels are easy to make and absolutely delicious. They go great with German beer and are perfect for an Oktoberfest-themed party.
Ingredients
- ¾ cup warm water
- ¾ cup warm milk
- 1 tbsp malt extract or sugar (brown or white)
- 2 ¼ tsp of active dry yeast (one packet)
- 4 ½ cups flour
- 2 tsp kosher salt
- 2 oz butter, melted
- 1 tbsp oil
- Coarse salt for topping
For the baking soda bath:
- 9 cups water
- ½ cup baking soda
For the egg wash:
- 1 large egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cold water
Instructions
- Mix the warm water, warm milk, and malt extract (or sugar)
in a large bowl, lightly whisk. - Sprinkle the yeast into the mixture, lightly whisk, set
aside in a warm spot for 10 minutes. - Meanwhile, melt 2 oz (half a stick) unsalted butter.
- Add the flour, 2 tsp kosher salt, and melted butter to yeast
mixture. Lightly stir to mix. - Knead this mixture until it becomes a soft, stretchy ball of
dough. - Add the dough ball to a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a
kitchen towel, set aside in a warm spot to rise—about 1 hour or until dough doubles in size. - Dump the dough onto a clean surface and punch the air
bubbles out of it. - Form the dough into a log and cut into equally sized pieces:
8 for large pretzels, 10 for medium, 12 for small ones. - Roll out each piece into a long dough strand then form into
a pretzel shape. - Set aside on a parchment-lined baking sheet at room
temperature for 30 minutes, then move to the refrigerator for another hour. - Bring 9 cups of water to a boil then add ½ cup baking soda
and reduce the heat just a little. - Lightly place each pretzel, one at a time, into the baking
soda bath for 30 seconds. Remove with slotted spatula or strainer and replace to the parchment paper. - Beat together 1 large egg yolk and 1 tbsp of cold water.
- Brush the surface of each pretzel lightly with the egg wash.
- Sprinkle with coarse salt.
- Bake at 450°F for 10-12 minutes, rotating halfway through. (ovens vary)
- Enjoy pretzels with German beer, German mustard, and German gemütlichkeit. Prost!
Notes
Given their nature, Bavarian soft pretzels don't store well for very long and are best eaten as soon as possible. (Like that will be a problem.)
Recommended Products
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More info for Oktoberfest
- Heading to Germany? Find great places to stay here.
- Need a car? Check out the best rental car deals here.
- Travel planning: Pick up a Germany guidebook for all your sightseeing, and this must-have Germany customs and culture guide too!
- What other German recipes have I covered? Check out these posts.
- Like this post? Have questions? Hit me up on Instagram
How did your Oktoberfest pretzels come out? Let me know in the comments below!
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