A few weeks ago, on our first attempt to venture more than a block from my apartment after the big snowstorm, Matt and I headed to a bar to watch the Packers game. While neither of us is inclined to order food at a place where it’s so easy to play “Find the Grossest Thing on the Menu,” we felt bad taking up a table on a busy afternoon just to order a couple of drinks. Instead of trying the game winner (loser?), a cheesy seafood pasta dish, we figured that basic bar food was our best bet and ordered wings and a soft pretzel. The wings were wings, but the soft pretzel turned out to be a rock hard pretzel, and we sent it back. Its replacement was soft and edible, but still mildly insulting to all forms of soft, chewy carbs in the world. The mediocre twist of dough reminded me that I hadn’t made pretzels in a while, and the seed was planted.
I quickly forgot about my intentions over Christmas, but as I was flipping through food magazines last week to figure out what to cook for a Rose Bowl gathering I came across a pretzel recipe in the latest Food & Wine. German-style pretzels it is! I chose not to make them using lye (which allowed me to skip the step where you put on long-sleeves, gloves, and goggles) and went the baking soda route instead. Unfortunately I only had a couple tablespoons of baking soda and not the 1/2 cup that the recipe calls for, so the pretzels didn’t get as brown as I would have liked, but they still tasted just as pretzels should and were perfect dipped in both mustard and cheese sauce. If only things had fared so well for the Badgers…
The recipe: German-Style Pretzels
Shaping the pretezels
Making use of one of my Christmas presents: Silpats
My salt grinder set to a coarse grind created the perfect sized salt crystals for sprinkling.
I didn’t get a chance to take a hot-out-of-the-oven picture because I was running around trying to load up my car to head to the party and in the bitter cold my car door was somehow frozen open. After a brief moment of panic I figured out a temporary solution to the car dilemma, packaged up the pretzels, and quickly headed to where there was beer. The above picture is of two-day-old pretzels, which were better than the rock hard bar pretzels, but not quite as good as the freshly baked ones.
