Pretzels – Part 1

You may be wondering why I am baking my own pretzels when, living in Southern Germany, I can buy them in every single bakery, not to mention the extra Brezel booths which pop up all over the place. Well, yes, I can buy them everywhere, but they aren’t always very good. In fact, the most consistent thing about pretzels here is their inconsistency. Plus the fact that they are almost always covered in so much coarse salt that you first have to spend 15 minutes picking it all off.

So my main motivation in baking my own pretzels was that I wanted small pretzels that tasted how I thought they should – every time I baked them – and that didn’t have any salt on them, as I wanted to give them to Henry to snack on.

I did a bit of research before starting and as with almost anything else, opinions vary as to how exactly a soft pretzel should be made. In the end, I went with a recipe which was pretty much how I usually make bagels, except that I boiled the pretzels for a much shorter time in water which contained “Haus Natron”, rather than the rather dangerous lye which would be in the original recipe (it gives the pretzels their characteristic colour and crust, which is why they are known as Laugenbrezeln ie lye pretzels).

I’m not that great at forming the actual pretzel shape yet, so they looked a bit wierd, but I’m sure that will get better with practice.
Here is the batch before going in the oven:

 

And this is what they looked like about 12 minutes later:

 

Most importantly of all, they tasted fabulous!!!!

The recipe is as follows and makes 6 mini pretzels:

Ingredients

• 250g flour
• 1 pack dried yeast
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• approx. 150 – 200ml warm water
• 2 packs Natron (I actually think 1 pack would have been enough, and if you can’t get this you can substitue 1 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda instead)
• oil for greasing tray

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, salt and sugar with enough of the water to make a smooth and stretchy dough, then cover it and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour.
2. When the dough has about doubled in size, put on a big pan of water to boil. add the natron and preheat your oven to 225°C.
3. Divide the dough into 6 equal sized pieces and form each one into a long, thin rope with the ends being slightly thinner than the middle. Mine were about 30cm long.
4. Form the pretzels like this:
5. Boil the pretzels 2 or 3 at a time for 30 seconds, making sure you turn them a couple of times. DO NOT boil for any longer, or they will go very chewy and rubbery!
6. Take them out of the water with a slotted spoon and place on an oiled baking tray. If you want salt on them, you should sprinkle it on now.
7. Bake in the oven for 10 – 15 mintues until well browned.
8. Take out and allow to cool slightly before eating.

 

Sandwiches Part 1

Part 1 because I’m sure there will be more coming, but for the moment, here are some ideas of what to put in them:

• cream cheese and thinly sliced cucumber (always a winner, this one)
• mushroom pate (see Toast post (!) for more details on this)
• cheese (slices)
• cheese (slices) and ham (this is also nice lightly toasted so that the cheese melts and helps stick everything together)

Acutally, that’s about it for us and sandwiches so far. The problem is that ds tends to pull apart the bread to see what’s in it (and to generally play around with it a bit), so whatever goes into our sandwiches has to have one overriding quality, and that is STICKINESS.

I usually use sliced bread (like for making toast), white or brown, but sometimes I’ll use normal loaf. Ds seems to like both equally well. I cut into triangles or small-sized sandwiches, easy for him to hold and take bites out of. The bigger the sandwich, the less chance there is of it staying together.

 

Toast

Yes, yes, of course you know how to make toast, I haven’t gone completely mad. Here are just a few ideas of what to put on it and how to serve it up, you know, for inspiration.

• cream cheese – an absolute favourite, even when teething and not wanting to eat anything else
• marmite and butter – for the ultimate savoury kick
• mushroom pate – we get a particularly tasty one from alnatura, so I’ve never actually tried making my own, but if I ever do, I’ll post the recipe here
• jam and butter - interestingly, ds has shown that he does have preferences when it comes to jam, sour cherry being the favourite
• fruit spreads - again, we were able to get a selection from alnatura, but basically is was just lightly cooked and pureed fruit, the apple and banana being the tastiest (also fab on pancakes!)
• avocado  – yes, really. Make sure it’s very ripe and then spread away. Also very nice in combination with cream cheese.

We cut the toast into triangles – perfect to hold, and not too much at once.
And we use both white and brown sliced bread, though we all prefer the white.