Would you like some pretzel with your butter?

A popular breakfast food in Bavaria/Southern Germany is the Butterbreze, or butter pretzel.  While you can find these in any bakery, I usually come face to face with these lovelies whenever we have a full day conference at work (and only if they decide to offer breakfast for us employees).  A tray comes in full of pretzels split in half (like a sandwich), with a THICK layer of butter inside.  Plain pretzels are nowhere to be found.  If the pretzel was simply lightly buttered… I could maybe see it.  Forget the fact that to make these pretzels, butter is already an ingredient, and additional butter is really not needed.  But no – this is a LOT of butter.  And it seems like this part goes unnoticed… unless I am your coworker. 



A pretzel from the campus bakery - notice the thick slices of butter



The thing is, I love pretzels (and most breads).  And I love free things.  So I am definitely not passing up on free pretzels at work.  Instead I just get creative.  I find a spoon from the coffee tray, and go about scraping the butter out of the middle.  As I am doing this, I am often asked ‘Why’??  My coworkers can’t understand why I would want to reduce the amount of deliciously buttery butter from this delicacy.  When I explain that there is just way too much butter for my tastes, they are shocked – there can’t be that much!

But then I end up with a giant spoonful of butter on my plate, which has my coworkers staring at it, confused.  They don’t want to believe they are eating all of that butter with their pretzels.  But they are.  And they never accept my offer of extra butter. 

Actual photo of one of my butter-reduction sessions at work