Homemade Laugenstangen (German lye sticks) from the airfryer

Name: Homemade Laugenstangen (German lye sticks) from the airfryer
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 18 min
Total time: 48 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 300 g wheat flour (type 550); 1 pack dried yeast (7 g); 1 tsp sugar; 1 tsp salt; 150 ml lukewarm water; 20 g butter or margarine; 1 l water for the bicarbonate of soda solution; 4 tsp bicarbonate of soda; 1 tsp coarse salt

A German bake that belongs to a Brotzeit all over Germany: home-shaped lye sticks with coarse salt, here from the basket instead of the baking tray. Real baker's lye is caustic and has no place in a home kitchen — soda water from a pan gives a paler but safe crust. In the basket the sticks succeed without long preheating, but they brown less evenly than in a big oven and have to be baked in two runs.

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Cook time

48 min

🍽️

Servings

🧂

Ingredients

View Original ↗

Nutrition

per serving

150 kcal

Calories

4 g

Protein

2 g

Fat

27 g

Carbs

Ingredients

For 8 servings

Instructions

1
Mix the wheat flour with the dried yeast, the sugar and the salt in a bowl.
2
Add the lukewarm water and the melted butter or margarine and knead everything to a smooth, supple dough.
3
Cover the dough and leave it to rise in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until it has visibly increased in size.
4
Knead the dough through briefly, divide it into eight equal pieces and roll each one into a stick about 12 centimetres long, a little thicker in the middle than at the ends.
5
Bring the water for the bicarbonate of soda solution to the boil in a wide pan and stir in the bicarbonate of soda a spoonful at a time; the solution foams up briefly as you do. It is boiled in a pan on the hob, never in the airfryer basket.
6
Lay the sticks one at a time in the boiling soda water, leave them for about half a minute, lift them out with a slotted spoon and leave them to drain well.
7
Slash the drained sticks twice at an angle and sprinkle them with the coarse salt.
8
Preheat the airfryer to 180 °C.
9
Cut a piece of baking paper to the size of the basket; it must not stick out over the rim. Lay four sticks on it in a single layer with space around them and stack nothing, their weight holds the paper down; the other four go into the second run. Bake at 180 °C.
10
Turn the sticks with tongs so that the underside takes on colour too. Finish baking at 180 °C until they are glossy and golden brown and sound hollow when you tap them from below.
11
Leave the Laugenstangen to cool on a wire rack, otherwise the underside sweats and the crust goes soft.