Royal Bavarian Brezen
Royal Bavarian Brezen, Humboldt County, CA
Peerless C131P goes to Pretzel Heaven
When Cornelius Loewenstein and his wife Alexandra decided to start a business selling authentic Bavarian Brezen (pretzels), step one was to purchase an oven that could do the job efficiently and effectively. Though the business originated in their home, they needed to find an oven that they could easily transport, making travel to various festivals and other local events convenient. Another issue the couple found was that though they were looking at traditional pizza ovens, they needed to customize the oven to bake pretzels. That is where the Peerless C131P with wire racks came in.
Alexandra happily took a few minutes out from pretzel making to explain why she chose Peerless Ovens, and what her and her husband’s impressions have been. “We needed a different type of oven,” she explained, “and what attracted us to the Peerless Oven was it not being bound to one place, it’s very mobile.” She said that their business started in their home with a regular household oven, but it soon became clear they would need to upgrade to keep up with demand, and the Peerless C131P with wire racks was the perfect answer.
Because of the slightly different nature of the pretzel business, Alexandra said that one of the main benefits of this oven is the ability to customize it with wire racks instead of the traditional pizza stones. “What attracted us to the Peerless was the opportunity to have it a little bit modified, like in our case with the racks and not the stones in order to make pretzels,” Alexandra said. “It’s very good if you’re just starting out, it’s a reasonable price range and also has the reputation of Peerless.” How did she hear about Peerless Ovens in the first place? “It was recommended to us by a local business owner who said that that’s how he built up his business.”
After starting Royal Bavarian Brezen in November of 2014, things have really started to come together nicely for the Bavarian pretzel business. “What we are doing with the Peerless,” Alexandra said, “is basically we are making ALL of our pretzels in it. And the product range we have is from a regular salty pretzel, cheese and onion, spinach – we even have pizza pretzels made with fresh tomatoes.”
And how does the oven perform under pressure? According to Alexandra, they put the oven through the ringer over the 4th of July weekend, and they couldn’t be happier with the results. “The busiest day was the 4th of July where we signed up for two festivals and ended up baking 1000 pretzels in one night,” she recounted. “The oven ran for about 10 hours nonstop that night and kept up just fine. The great thing is that the heat circulates evenly, so we have nice pretzels where they all get a nice brown color, and it doesn’t matter what shelf they are on – they all get fluffy, they all rise nicely and they all get wonderful color.”
The bottom line for Alexandra is that the oven has helped their business so tremendously that they will soon need another. “Right now we use it inside our house on the counter, use it to cover festivals, and we worked to put it into our food trailer so we can bake there, too,” she said. “We would like to keep it in the truck, so we will eventually need another oven for our facility here.”
Would Royal Bavarian Brezen recommend the Peerless C131P to other businesses? No question about it, the way Alexandra tells it: “One fact that is very important is there is hardly any other oven in this size and price range that can be not only a pizza oven but also a regular baker’s oven.” When it comes to Royal Bavarian Brezen and Peerless Ovens, it seems like a match made in pretzel heaven.