It is perhaps no surprise, then, that any modern-day Oktoberfest includes the Bavarian-style pretzel—or “brezel,” as they say in Germany—which can be distinguished by its darker and somewhat crispier outside, and a chewier inside. 

In Asheville, the maker of prized Bavarian pretzels is Blunt Pretzels, a Swannanoa-based operation owned by Munich native Eddy Schoeffmann. Although the spirit of Asheville runs thick in Schoeffmann’s veins (he’s a certified massage therapist and worked a side job as a raft guide), he takes his pretzel craft just as seriously as any German baker, whose professional guild, interesting enough, uses the pretzel as its logo. 

The signature pretzel at Swannanoa-based Blunt Pretzels.

Schoeffmann started making pretzels in 2010—“mostly because I had too much time on my hands,” he says—shortly after moving to Asheville from New York City, where he worked as an environmental geologist, a web developer and, alternatively, a writer, actor and artist. 

His pretzel-making operation started much like many Asheville businesses: a passion project that turned into a side hustle that evolved into a full-blown business. Before Hurricane Helene, Blunt Pretzels sold about 3,000 pretzels per week at bars, breweries and festivals—with half of its annual sales happening in September, October and November—and its distribution spanned from Raleigh to Johnson City. Blunt also offers home deliveries with packages of half and full dozen pretzels sold online. 

“When I was growing up, pretzels were just the food that was around,” Schoeffmann says. “Every bakery sold them; it’s just the ubiquitous bread item. We had them for breakfast with honey and butter—which is still how I like them—or for lunch or dinner with sausage dipped in mustard.” 

In the weeks and months following Hurricane Helene in September 2024, Blunt Pretzels became a hub for the battered local community, which got hit particularly hard by flooding from the nearby Swannanoa River. Schoeffmann and a small army of local residents and volunteers set up a makeshift relief hub in Blunt Pretzel’s bier garden and production shop, offering 2-3 hot meals per day, along with clothing and food, and a gathering place for neighbors to grieve and connect. Now, with the immediate needs being met, Schoeffmann has once again set his sights on the growth of his business. 

Eddie Schoeffman and a Blunt baker hand-rolling the pretzels.

On the day of our visit to Blunt Pretzels, Schoeffmann and two other bakers were preparing a fresh batch of pretzels, manually cutting each portion with a bench scraper. Each pretzel is hand-rolled and shaped, with a signature pretzel going from a two-foot long dough snake to an elegantly wrapped loop with a stylized fatter belly and thinner arms. 

The dough is a fairly simple blend of five ingredients: organic wheat flour from North Carolina’s Lindley Mills, yeast, malt, sea salt and organic shortening— making the pretzels both organic and dairy free. 

From that dough, the Blunt bakers create original pretzels, jumbo pretzels, braids, knots and, more recently, hot dog and hamburger buns. Schoeffmann has fine-tuned his recipe over the years, with quite a bit of knowledge and inspiration handed down from a celebrated baker in Munich who attends church with his sister. “We mostly talked on the phone and email, but he’s given me a lot of help,” Schoeffmann says. 

The pretzels proof for 30 minutes to an hour in a refrigerator before being pushed through a lye shower and dropped into a 500° oven for 13 minutes. It’s here in the oven where the pretzel crusts develop their coveted mahogany color with a crack in the skin, breaking ever so slightly to reveal the chewy dough inside. 

“This is what you want,” Schoeffman says, pointing at a row of jumbo pretzels in the oven, each of which has a perfect split up the side. “It’s almost like roasting a marshmallow.” 

Pretzels baking in the oven at Blunt Pretzels.

As a side note for those who associate lye with danger, it’s perfectly safe to eat when cooked. In fact, the lye shower is what gives the pretzels their beautiful color and shine, as well as their signature smell and taste. 

While rooted in German culture, Oktoberfest is widely celebrated in the U.S. with several cities hosting events and welcoming hundreds of thousands of people—all of them eager for steins of cold beer, bratwurst, cheese and pretzels. 

The Michigan city of Frankenmuth hosts a festival that has been officially sanctioned by Munich’s government and in 2024 will offer four days of feasting in late September, featuring a stellar lineup of German bands, a wiener dog race and an “official” keg-tapping time, which presumably acts much like the kickoff to a football game. The largest festival, meanwhile, will be held in Cincinnati—which transforms into “Zinzinnati” for the event. It drew a record crowd of 800,000 attendees in 2023 and might be on pace to match that record this year. 

In Asheville, which has one of the highest U.S. rates of breweries per capita, the primary Oktoberfest festival will be held October 4 at Pack Square Park, featuring an estimated 20 breweries, cideries, wineries and distilleries along with live performances from the Asheville-based polka band Lagerhosen. Blunt Pretzels will also be there as part of its packed schedule for the Oktoberfest season with plenty of fresh-baked pretzels for the German-inspired merry making.