Missouri Business Fall 2018

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A tasty tradition is kept alive
at Gus’ Pretzel Shop in St. Louis
Story and photography by Shawna Scott
12 MISSOURI BUSINESS
he savory smell of fresh-baked
goods wafts over customers the
moment they open the door of
Gus’ Pretzel Shop in St. Louis’ Benton
Park neighborhood. As the patrons wait
in line at the counter, they can watch the
pretzel-making process through large
glass windows that reveal the industrial
kitchen.
The shop is just two years shy of its
100th anniversary. Koebbe brothers
Gus Jr. and David carry on the legacy,
using their grandfather’s original recipe.
“Everybody’s almost family we work
so closely together,” said Gus Koebbe Jr.,
the owner of the shop. “I’m right in here
working with people. I don’t really have
an office I sit in and dictate what to do.”
This morning, four bakers are hard at
work mixing ingredients, filling baking
sheets and keeping an eye on the batches
in the oven. One of them is Gus Jr.’s son
Gus III, who joined as an employee in
2008. Today he’s teaching a new hire
how to make a batch of dough.
First, 50 pounds of flour goes into
the mixer. Water, salt and yeast are
added, and then the dough is kneaded
for about seven minutes before getting
turned out onto a board for its first rise.
Once it rises, it’s fed into a machine
that slices off portions and rolls them
through a moving belt to produce sticks
of uniform size.
After that, they’re either arranged on
a pan as sticks or hand-twisted into a
classic pretzel shape. Following a second
rise, they get dipped into a browning
solution and slid into the oven on Ferris
wheel-style rotating shelves to bake until
they reach golden-brown perfection.
The final product is chewy on the
inside, crispy on the outside and flaked
with shiny salt crystals. A whole batch
takes only 40 or 45 minutes from start
to finish.
“We try to make them fresh throughout
the day, so we’re not making them in
the morning and then selling them at 4
o’clock in the afternoon,” said Koebbe.
The stick pretzels are the customer
favorite.
“We probably do 90, 95 percent
sticks,” Koebbe said.
The simple stick shape was originally
a marketing tactic during the era when
pretzels were sold mainly by street
peddlers. Sitting at the bottom of brown