A pretzel-shaped pastry, with almond and cinnamon filling, almond glaze, and sliced almonds on top. A Luxembourg delicacy given to the one you LOVE on Pretzel Sunday, the 4th Sunday of Lent.
The story of the Luxembourg Almond Bretzel starts here: My husband and I experienced our first “Bretzelsonndeg” in 2020. Pretzel-shaped pastries started showing up in the Luxembourg grocery stores. Of course, we had to try one! They were amazing and we ate them several more times, not realizing they would disappear after Easter—never to return until the following year.
We learned the “bretzels” were part of a Luxembourg tradition, Pretzel Sunday. Every year, on the 4th Sunday of Lent, Luxembourg men offer their beloved a sweet pretzel—bretzel. If accepted, a chocolate egg is returned on Easter Sunday. If not accepted, an empty basket is given—hence the Luxembourgish expression “de Kuerf kreien” (to be given the basket) if you get dumped. Leap year–the tradition is reversed. To see how Luxembourgers celebrate: https://luxembourg.public.lu/en/society-and-culture/festivals-and-traditions/pretzel-sunday.html
About the Recipe:
Now that I live in the US, I miss the Luxembourg Almond Bretzel and decided to create a recipe to eat anytime, but especially on Pretzel Sunday—which in 2022 is on March 27.
My recipe uses a Quick Puff Pastry recipe created by BakerBettie (https://bakerbettie.com/quick-puff-pastry/). I absolutely love the ease and taste and flaky texture of her quick puff pastry recipe, which is the base of my Luxembourg Almond Bretzel.
Since it only takes 30 minutes of your time to prepare the pastry (plus 1½ hours chilling in the fridge), it makes sense to make it from scratch, not buy your puff pastry! The difference in taste is apparent!
With a total of 3 hours from start to fresh from the oven, you can have flaky, delicious Luxembourg Almond Bretzels, filled with almond, sugar and cinnamon—dripping with almond glaze and sliced almonds. You can start a new love tradition on Pretzel Sunday (or any Sunday) this year!
Ingredients Needed for the Luxembourg Almond Bretzel
Quick Puff Pastry:
- Flour: An all-purpose flour or finely ground flour works great on this recipe.
- Salt: A must-have ingredient in any bread or pastry recipe. If you accidently leave out salt, you definitely notice something is wrong about the taste!
- Butter: Use real unsalted butter, not margarine. It’s the stand-out ingredient in the puff pastry. Don’t use less butter than what’s stated in the recipe. I know, if you live in Europe, you will be tempted. Butter comes in 200g blocks, so you will need to buy two blocks and find a good use for the left-over butter!
- Ice-cold water: Measure your water, add ice cubes and let it sit to become ice-cold. The colder the better!
Bretzel Filling:
- Almond Flour: Almond flour gives the subtle taste of almonds in the filling. The perfect secret ingredient to a cinnamon and sugar filling.
- Coconut Sugar: I chose coconut sugar over brown sugar because the flavor is a little more subdued than brown sugar. I didn’t want the sweet flavor to overpower the hint of almond in the filling. If you choose to use brown sugar, you can decrease the amount by a few grams.
- Cinnamon: A delicious ingredient for a pastry filling.
- Pinch of Salt: Everything is better with a pinch of salt!
Egg Wash and Almond Glaze:
- Egg Wash: Egg and milk or water. Does a pastry really need an egg wash? It makes all the difference in the golden brown look of a professional-looking baked pastry. See this link to compare the difference (https://www.bakerbettie.com/washes-for-baking)
- Almond Glaze: This is a simple glaze with powdered sugar (fine confectioner’s sugar) and hot water. The hot water melts the powdered sugar, taking away that sugary taste.
- Almond Emulsion or Almond Extract: I choose emulsions when I can. I typically purchase them at a baking store or on Amazon. This difference is that an emulsion is water-based and an extract is alcohol-based. The emulsion produces a robust flavor that is not baked out and not overshadowed by an alcohol taste. Also, since the flavor is not baked out, you can taste the product before you bake it and add more flavoring accordingly. You use the same amount of flavoring 1:1 with an emulsion or an extract.
How to Make the Luxembourg Almond Bretzel
Why the Quick Puff Pastry recipe is an amazing find?
Typically to make a good, flaky pastry from scratch, you make a laminated dough. A laminated dough is layers of dough alternating with layers of fat—created through a series of repeated folding, rolling, and slabs of butter. It has the reputation of being very complicated and intimidating and time-consuming. This Quick Puff Pastry recipe is a “blitz pastry” where the slab of butter is not encased in the dough for the folding process. The cubes of butter are mixed into the pastry dough and then the folding process begins. The pastry dough can be made in 30 minutes (plus some chilling time). The results are slightly less flaky than a traditional laminated dough, but still impressive and just as delicious! It’s the perfect choice for the Luxembourg Almond Bretzel.
How to Make the Quick Puff Pastry:
First, cube the butter and keep it cold in the fridge. Whisk together the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Add the cold cubed butter to the bowl and toss it throughout the flour.
Here’s where the magic begins:
Press down on each piece of butter with your fingertips until each one is flattened out. Keep the pieces very large, just flatten them. When all of the butter has been flattened start adding the ice-cold water a few tablespoons at a time. Use your hands to toss the water throughout the mixture. Keep adding the water until most of the flour is moistened and the mixture starts forming large clumps.
Place some plastic wrap on your counter. Dump the pastry dough mixture onto the plastic wrap, press the dough together into a rectangular shape and then wrap in plastic wrap. Place in the refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days.
Folding and Flipping:
After the dough has chilled, flour a work surface and roll the dough out into a skinny rectangle that is about ¼” (1/2 cm) thick. The width and length are determined by how you roll the dough. The only dimension that matters is the ¼” thick. The dough going to look really messy and chunky. Fold the dough over itself in thirds (fold the top third down to the middle third, then the bottom third up to the middle/top third).
Rotate the dough 90 degrees to the left. Roll out and fold the dough 3 more times (4 times total), always rotating 90 degrees in the same direction between each fold. Your dough will become smooth in texture each time you roll it out and fold it. If you notice that the dough feels too warm, feel rubbery, or is shrinking back a lot while rolling out, let it rest in the fridge for about 10 minutes (covered in plastic) to relax the gluten and to let the fat firm up.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate to chill for at least 1 hour before creating the Luxembourg Almond Bretzels.
How to Shape the Bretzel:
Rolling out the Pastry Dough:
After second fridge time, roll out pastry dough into a long, thin rectangle until it is ¼” (½-cm) thick.
Note: If you roll your pastry dough to be very thin and very long, your pretzels will be larger and you will have less individual pastries. If you roll your pastry dough to be closer to a square, your pretzels will be small, the pretzel shape will not be as noticeable, but you will have more individual pastries.
Applying the Bretzel Filling:
Apply a very thin layer of melted butter or spritz lightly with cooking spray. Spread with fingers so entire surface of dough is oiled. Sprinkle ¼ cup of filling evenly on entire surface of the rectangle of dough (use more filling if needed). With a rolling pin, roll over the filling with a rolling pin—to press it into the dough. Use pizza cutter or knife to cut ¾” strips—you get about 6-10 strips, depending on how wide your rectangle is.
Making the Pretzel Shape:
Gently twist each strip of pastry—making sure the dough side is showing, not the filling side. Pull and stretch as you twist.
Create the pretzel shape by first making a teardrop with the ends of the strip twisted together twice at the top of the teardrop. Then fold the twists to the center of the tear drop and firmly press the ends into the dough to form a pretzel shape. (Refer to the video to watch how this works.)
Place pretzel shaped pastries on an ungreased (but covered with silpat or parchment paper) baking sheet. Use your fingers to open up the pretzel holes a little bit.
If it took you a long time to form these pretzels, put in fridge for 10 minutes to firm up the butter in the pastry dough. It will keep the butter from leaking out onto the baking sheet while it bakes.
How to Bake the Bretzel:
Brush the egg wash onto each pastry. Sprinkle a little filling onto the wet egg wash.
Bake at 375° F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. (Don’t be alarmed by melted butter on the baking pan. The pastry will still bake just fine.)
While baking, make almond glaze and prepare the sliced almonds, by placing them in a bowl.
Remove pastries from the oven and immediately place each pastry on a cooling rack sitting on top of a cool baking pan. Drizzle generously each pastry, one by one, with almond glaze and immediately sprinkle with sliced almonds. When finished, drizzle glaze on each pastry again.
You will be amazed at how easy the Luxembourg Almond Bretzels are to make. And the flavor will keep you coming back for more! Give some love on Pretzel Sunday—or any Sunday!!
And when your true love gives you a Bretzel… visit Taste.The Kitchen Next Door the beginning of April for Homemade Peanut Butter Eggs and Homemade Marshmallow Eggs you can return to your true love! No empty baskets here!!
–Kim
Luxembourg Almond Bretzel
Ingredients
Quick Puff Pastry (adapted from a favorite recipe by Baker Bettie)
- Visit this link: https://bakerbettie.com/quick-puff-pastry/ for amazing step-by-step photos
- 2 cups (240g) all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon (2g) salt
- 1 cup 2 sticks (225g) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
- 8-10 Tablespoons (120-140ml) water, ice cold
Bretzel Filling
- 2/3 cup (64g) almond flour
- 2 Tablespoons (20g) coconut sugar—can use brown sugar
- ¼ teaspoon cinnamon
- pinch of salt
Egg Wash
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon milk or water
Almond Glaze
- 1 cup (114g) powdered sugar
- 2 Tablespoons hot water
- 1 teaspoon almond emulsion or almond extract
- 1 cup sliced almonds (for sprinkling on top of glaze)
Instructions
Quick Puff Pastry (adapted from a favorite recipe by Baker Bettie):
- In a large mixing bowl whisk together the flour and salt.
- Add the cold cubed butter to the bowl and toss it throughout the flour until each butter cube is coated.
- Press down on each piece of butter with your fingertips until each one is flattened out. Some butter pieces may break into two pieces. Try to keep most of the pieces very large, just flatten them out. Do not work the butter in as much as you would do with a pie crust.
- When all of the butter has been flattened start adding the ice-cold water a few tablespoons at a time. Use your hands to toss the water throughout the mixture. Keep adding the water until most of the flour is moistened and the mixture starts forming large clumps.
- Spread out a piece of plastic wrap on the counter. On the plastic wrap, press the dough together into a rectangular shape and then wrap. Place in the refrigerator to chill for at least 30 minutes and up to 2 days.
- After the dough has chilled, flour a work surface and roll the dough out into a skinny rectangle about ¼" (½-cm) thick.
- Fold the dough over itself into thirds (fold the top third of the dough over onto the middle third and then the bottom third over onto the top/middle third). Then rotate the dough 90 degrees to the left. Roll out and fold the dough 3 more times (for a total of 4), always rotating 90 degrees in the same direction between each fold.
- Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate before using it. Ideally, 1 hour is best before rolling it out. The dough can be refrigerated for a total of 48 hours between this chilling time and the first.
- This dough can be wrapped well in plastic wrap and frozen for up to 2 months. Let thaw in the refrigerator overnight before using.
Bretzel Filling:
- Mix all ingredients in a small bowl until fully incorporated.
Shaping the Bretzel:
- Preheat oven to 375° F.
- After second fridge time, roll out pastry dough into a long, thin rectangle until it is ¼" (½-cm) thick. (see note)
- Spread with a very thin layer of melted butter or spritz lightly with cooking spray. Spread with fingers so entire surface of dough is oiled. Spread ¼ cup of filling evenly on entire surface of the rectangle of dough (use more filling if needed). With a rolling pin, roll over the filling with a rolling pin—to press it into the dough. Use pizza cutter or knife to cut ¾” strips—you get about 6-10 strips, depending on how wide your rectangle is.
- Gently twist each strip of pastry—making sure the dough side is showing, not the filling side. Pull and stretch as you twist.
- Twist into a pretzel shape by first making a teardrop shape with the ends of the strip twisted together twice at the top of the teardrop (see photo). Then fold the twists to the center of the tear drop and firmly press the ends into the dough to form a pretzel shape.
- Place pretzel shaped pastries on an ungreased (but covered with silpat or parchment paper) baking sheet. Use your fingers to open up the pretzel holes a little bit.
- If it took you a long time to form these pretzels, put in fridge for 5-10 minutes to firm up the butter in the pastry dough.
Egg Wash and Bake:
- When all the strips are twisted and shaped into pretzels, make the egg wash by placing one cracked egg in a small bowl. Add milk or water. Use a fork or whisk to create a smooth egg wash.
- Brush the egg wash onto each pastry. Immediately sprinkle a little filling onto the wet egg wash.
- Bake pastries at 375° F for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown. (Don’t be alarmed by butter seeping from the pastries onto the baking pan.)
Almond Glaze:
- While pastries are baking, make the almond glaze.
- Mix together ingredients with a rubber spatula or whisk.
- Prepare sliced almonds and place in a bowl.
- Remove pastries from the oven and immediately place each pastry on a cooling rack sitting on top of a cool baking pan. Drizzle generously each pastry, one by one, with almond glaze and immediately sprinkle with sliced almonds. When finished, drizzle glaze on each pastry again.
- Can serve these Bretzels immediately or store at room temperature for 2-3 days.
Notes
