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Tinkerers want to revolutionize butter pretzels with machines
A machine fills a pretzel with butter in a bakery. photo
© Bernd Weißbrod/dpa
How does the butter get into the pretzel? It is done by hand, but that takes time when larger quantities are ordered. Is there an alternative?
Two inventors from Baden-Württemberg want to revolutionize the Swabian national pastry with a butter pretzel machine. Instead of smearing the butter on the pretzel by hand, it can be injected into the pastry with the machine by Dieter Obertautsch and his colleague Michael Feil (both 60).
Obertautsch came up with the idea when he ordered five buttered pretzels for himself and his colleagues from a bakery in 2006. At the time, he received annoyed looks from other customers and the saleswoman, he said. Since then, the buttered pretzel hasn’t let him go.
For years, the master electrician from Althütte near Stuttgart and his colleague have been working on a machine that gets the cold butter into the pretzel quickly. The small machine was created seven or eight prototypes later. The principle: “A block of butter goes in at the top and with a lot of pressure the butter comes out again from eleven cannulas at the bottom,” explains the inventor. And it is precisely on these cannulas that you put the pretzel. The cold butter is then injected at the touch of a button.
The inventors registered the patent for the machine in 2016. Since then, the founders have sold 110 butter pretzel machines. One of them costs around 4400 euros. The inventors report that they didn’t necessarily break down open doors with their idea. Bakers and customers are skeptical because for many only a hand-smeared pretzel is a real buttered pretzel. “The buttered pretzel is something sacred in Swabia,” said Obertautsch.