Eat the Match: Germany vs Ivory Coast

One country built its food around discipline. The other built it around abundance. Both are correct.

Group Stage · Toronto · June 21, 2026 · Gusto

The soft pretzel is German engineering applied to dough. There is a precise reason for every step, a specific chemical reaction behind the color, and a wrong way to do each part that the Germans have identified and codified. I respect this. I also respect that it produces one of the great hand foods of the world — chewy, dark-crusted, salt-crusted, impossible to eat politely.

The lye bath is what makes a pretzel a pretzel and not a bread roll in the shape of a knot. Lye — a dilute sodium hydroxide solution — raises the surface pH of the dough before baking, which triggers the browning reactions that produce the deep mahogany color and the distinct slightly alkaline flavor. Without it, you have a shaped bread. With it, you have something that tastes and looks like nothing else.

Ivory Coast gives us kedjenou — a chicken braise cooked in a sealed clay pot with no added water, so the chicken steams entirely in its own juices and the juices of the tomatoes and aromatics sealed inside. It is extraordinary. It requires patience and absolutely refuses to be rushed, which is the right approach to any braise worth eating.

Soft pretzels and sealed-pot kedjenu.

Ingredients

• For the pretzels (makes 8):
• 500g strong white bread flour
• 7g instant yeast
• 10g salt
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 300ml warm water
• 30g unsalted butter, softened
• coarse sea salt or pretzel salt for topping
• For the lye bath:
• 1 litre water
• 50g food-grade lye (sodium hydroxide) — handle with rubber gloves, glass bowl only
• OR: 50g bicarbonate of soda baked at 120°C for 1 hour (baked baking soda — weaker but safer)
• For the kedjenou:
• 1 whole chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
• 4 large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 2 white onions, sliced
• 4 garlic cloves, whole
• 1 scotch bonnet or habanero, whole and pierced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• salt and black pepper
• fresh thyme

Method

1. Make the pretzel dough: combine flour, yeast, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Add the warm water and butter. Mix until a rough dough forms, then knead for 8-10 minutes until smooth and slightly tacky. Cover and rest 1 hour until doubled.
2. Layer the kedjenou while the dough rests. In a heavy clay pot or Dutch oven with a tight lid, layer the onions on the bottom, then the chicken pieces, then the tomatoes, garlic, and aromatics. Do not add water. Do not add oil. Season generously. Seal the lid. If your pot has any gaps, seal with a strip of foil under the lid. Place over the lowest possible heat — barely a simmer. Cook 90 minutes without opening.
3. After 90 minutes, open the kedjenou carefully — the steam will be considerable. The chicken should be fully tender and sitting in a rich, concentrated broth made entirely from its own juices and the tomatoes. Taste and adjust salt. Replace the lid and keep warm.
4. Divide the pretzel dough into 8 equal pieces. Roll each into a rope 60cm long, thicker in the center, tapered at the ends. Form into pretzels: bring the ends up, cross them twice, press down onto the thick part of the loop. Place on lined trays and rest 15 minutes uncovered.
5. Prepare the lye bath with gloves on. Add lye granules to cold water — never the reverse — and stir until dissolved. Or use the baked baking soda bath (dissolve 50g in 1 litre of boiling water). Dip each pretzel for 30 seconds, remove with a slotted spoon, place on a lined baking sheet. The surface will look tacky and slightly gelatinous. This is correct.
6. Sprinkle generously with coarse salt. Bake at 230°C / 450°F for 12-14 minutes until deep brown — darker than you expect, darker than makes you comfortable. Pale pretzels taste like bread. Brown pretzels taste like pretzels.
7. Serve the pretzels hot or warm. Serve the kedjenou straight from the pot, with white rice or fufu alongside.

What lye does to bread dough — and why nothing else replicates it

Lye (sodium hydroxide) is a strong alkali. When dough is dipped in a lye solution, the alkaline bath reacts with the surface proteins and starches, beginning a denaturation process before the dough even enters the oven. During baking, these pretreated molecules undergo the Maillard reaction at a much lower temperature and much more aggressively than untreated dough. The result is a dark, lacquered crust that sets rapidly, remains chewy rather than crisp, and has a distinctive slightly bitter, alkaline finish that is the pretzel flavor. Baked bicarbonate of soda achieves approximately 60% of this effect and is the home baker's safer alternative.

On opening the kedjenou early: Do not open the pot before 90 minutes. The dish steams in sealed pressure. Opening it releases this pressure and extends the cook time significantly. You were warned.

Pale pretzels taste like bread. Brown pretzels taste like pretzels.

Why no water in the kedjenou.

The absence of added liquid in kedjenou is the technique. Tomatoes are approximately 94% water. Onions are approximately 89% water. Chicken joints release significant moisture as they cook. In a sealed vessel over low heat, all of this water is trapped — it cannot evaporate because there is nowhere to go. Instead, it condenses on the lid and falls back into the pot, cycling continuously and concentrating flavor while the chicken braises in it.

The result is a broth more concentrated than any stock you would make by adding water, because it is made entirely from the ingredients in the pot. Nothing has been diluted. This is why kedjenou has an intensity of flavor that seems disproportionate to the simplicity of its ingredient list.

The pretzel's browning works on opposite logic: it is about controlled release of moisture through a dry oven combined with the alkaline surface treatment that accelerates browning before moisture loss begins. One dish seals everything in. The other drives everything out. Both are doing exactly what they intend to do.