This is a customary German New Year’s treat. When you eat it first thing in the new year, it brings luck. It is generally eaten with butter in Germany. This dough is a bit sweeter than a salted pretzel. This was converted and translated into metric measurements and German, and it came out very well!
| Prep Time: | 20 mins |
| Cook Time: | 25 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr 35 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 20 mins |
| Servings: | 8 |
| Yield: | 8 servings |
Ingredients
- 6 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast
- 1 cup lukewarm milk, divided
- 4 ½ tablespoons white sugar
- 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, sifted, or more as needed
- 4 ½ tablespoons melted butter
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon white sugar, or as needed
Instructions
- Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup milk in a bowl; add 4 1/2 tablespoons sugar. Let stand until the yeast softens and begins to form a creamy foam, about 5 minutes.
- Stir yeast mixture and 2 1/4 cups flour together in a bowl until dough is dry and clumpy. Allow dough to rise for 15 minutes. Add remaining 1/2 cup milk, butter, egg, lemon zest, and salt to dough until evenly mixed.
- Knead dough, adding more flour as needed, until dough is elastic. Cover bowl with a clean damp towel or plastic wrap and allow dough to rise in a warm area until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 390 degrees F (199 degrees C). Grease a baking sheet.
- Gently knead dough; roll into a long rope on the prepared baking sheet and twist into a pretzel shape. Cover dough with a clean towel or plastic wrap and allow to rise for 15 minutes more.
- Brush egg yolk over dough and sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar over egg yolk.
- Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 255 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 37 g |
| Cholesterol | 69 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 2 g |
| Protein | 7 g |
| Saturated Fat | 5 g |
| Sodium | 71 mg |
| Sugars | 9 g |
| Fat | 9 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
These were quite good however they were difficult to deal with.
I made these to ring in 2021. I’m pulling out all the good luck foods I can find Lol. I’m not too crazy with the egg yolk effect on the top. It browned the a bit too much. Next time I will probably use butter. I took a creative liberty with colored sugar on top. Overall my family (that has a rich German heritage) really liked these. Thanks for the recipe and happy new year!!!
So good! Cooked for 19-20 and was perfectly done
They were pretty good. Rock solid crust, though. I thought I was going to break a tooth. It was soft on the inside, but just to hard on the out side.
I used orange zest instead of lemon, but wasn’t thrilled with the crust of the pretzel. If I were to spend the time making these again, I might try a 350 oven with a tray of water in the bottom of the oven.