“The pretzel is sacred to us!”

The Mack artisan bakery in Westhausen operates 47 of its own branches and supplies bulk buyers and Michelin-starred restaurants. Hans-Günther Mack, a master baker, bread sommelier and visionary entrepreneur, is also a traditionalist. “The pretzel is sacred to us,” he says of the signature product. 15,000 pretzels are produced daily, with most of the dough pieces being lye-applicated and baked in the branches. At the production facility in Westhausen, the lye application is handled by a machine from Westhausen: the ALLROUND from WP RIEHLE. You can use this machine for the application of traditional pretzels, pretzel rolls and pretzel loaves.

90 grams, with wide arms curled upwards, resembling a Bavarian pretzel, but with a broad back like a Swabian pretzel: the Mack pretzel combines the best of both worlds. The broad back, perfect for spreading, is key, as this pretzel is the ultimate snack: the butter pretzel. Flour, salt, water, spices, a traditional baking process involving pre-ferments and a long dough fermentation. Bread sommelier and bakery entrepreneur Hans-Günther Mack likes things to be straightforward. This also applies to the equipment and machinery in production. He and his bakery manager Arthur Senger appreciate the ALLROUND’s ease of use and robustness: “The machine has to run.” And the ALLROUND does run – up to 400 trays per hour are lye-dipped. Hans-Günther Mack took over his parents’ business in 1983 and built the bakery in Westhausen in 2000. Since then, only the second lye application machine from WP RIEHLE has been in operation, and this one has undergone only a few modifications compared to the standard specification. 

www.handwerksbaeckerei-mack.de

from Volker Simon
Published in the Bäcker Zeitung, December 2025