Shaken Not Stirred

Who doesn't remember how James Bond ordered his Martinis? 'Shaken, not stirred', but in Freiburg, the slogan is 'gespritzt, nicht gestrichen' (injected, not spread).

Around the corner from Red Baron's apartment, a travel agency moved out, and a local bread chain moved in. No, it‘s not Pfeifle but Reiß Beck. What follows is a new Pretzel Story. 

 
This morning, I passed by Reiß Beck and saw buttered pretzels being promoted for 1 euro each between 7 and 9 AM. The particularity was that the pretzels were not sliced, and the butter was injected rather than spread.

Since I had read an article in the Badische Zeitung the other day by René Zipperlen about the problem of spreading cool and hard butter evenly on a sliced pretzel, my curiosity made me enter the shop and buy the last butter-injected pretzel at 10 AM (too late!) for 1.80 euros.

 

My loyal readers know the difference between a Swabian and a Bavarian pretzel. So my first observation was that I had a Bavarian type of pretzel on my plate, not a Swabian*. It was not sliced, but butter was visible at the injection point.
*Do you think a Badener would eat a Swabian pretzel?

In his article, René calls the pretzel the queen of baked goods, a miracle of alchemy. Crisp in the arms, toasty, and with a white belly bulging deliciously out of the bundle, sprinkled with salt.

The crowning glory of the pretzel is the buttered pretzel, although a battered one: Frozen slices of butter are put on, or butter is injected with the spout in indiscriminate lumps. The actual pretzel is far from a mindful, even spread of butter.

So what I had this morning was a pretzel with butter injected into its belly, while its arms were spared.

But salvation is to come soon, as René wrote. The state of Baden-Württemberg has donated innovation funding to Engineer Joachim Doninger for his butter-spreading pretzel machine. Doninger's technology, to be launched this month, takes 10 seconds to properly cut open and smear a pretzel. Pictures from the production line show a pretzel oozing butter everywhere, even in the little arms. Why did René observe this with horror and as a no-go? The arms would have splintered if they were crispy.

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