pretzel logic

I love pretzels. As a kid, they were a treat that was allowed when we went somewhere special, because in general, they were coated with salt not sugar. I mean, they were practically health food! When we went to the fair or museum type thing, I would spot the pretzel cart first and start plotting a way to get over to it, making for damn sure that I was behaving good enough to get one into my hands once we got there. I liked the big ol' salt crystals stuck to that shiny yellow crust, and being able to self-administer some tangy mustard all over it. But really, it's that chewy dough.....

Last week, the monkey and I were up in Tilden Park, carving sine waves through the winter air with our bodies atop the various beasts of fantasy. While she was busy squeeling and kicking her legs up and down as we went around, something about the lingering popcorn smell in the building triggered me daydreaming. Before I knew it I was salivating, lost in my own childhood fantasy, imagining a big soft chewy pretzel in my hands while I recuperated from cramming my noggin' full of science fun at the Exploratorium in SF.

We got home and I started looking for pretzel recipes on the 'puter. I found at least a dozen out there, but none of them used sourdough. It wasn't an exhaustive search, but the statistics of the situation weren't looking likely of gaining any ground. They had other variations, but somehow the folks who have pretzel recipes out there are either not into using sourdough for a good reason, or out of ignorance. It was time to find out for myself. I fed my pet, set it out for the night, and went to bed thinking of some beery smelling dough, and just hankerin' to dream of big chewy, sourdoughy knots. They were out there somewhere.

I did up a somewhat "typical" dough, and after letting it rise once I punched it down, formed it into a largish rectangle and started cutting strips off of it. I gave each strip a gentle roll to round the edges some, and then things began getting knotty (sometimes, I just can't help myself, sorry).

As this was my first time making pretzels, my technique got better and better as I went. By the time I was nearly finished though, I was wanting to try a new shape, and I love bagels, so I just had to make a few. Also, I had settled on boiling my pretzels to really "set" the outside of them like bagels and having never made them before, figured that somehow making a bagel would help me gauge what was going on. This is somewhat ridiculous however; I had never made bagels either, so this is possibly some family remembrance through enjoying bagels at great grandma's house as a wee one, or its a hedge-your-bet type of maneuver engineered to up the odds of some sort of success should the primary experiment fail.

I boiled the now risen shapes for a bit on each side, and then placed them on a rack to cool a bit while my oven heated up. With the pretzels on their baking sheet I gave them an egg-white wash, sprinkled them with some chunky gray salt and popped 'em in. I peeked in at about ten minutes and they we're looking muy fantastico. Heaven was almost fully baked. In another few minutes we took them out, put them on a cooling rack, got out two plates, and no more than 30 or 40 seconds later we were going to town on them.

I had to take this photo fast as the only reason it was not being chewed already was because I demanded we get to the table first. Call me strict, but large salt crystals aren't too pleasant to step on when you walk around barefoot most of the time.

The monkey was still working on number one while I plowed on through two and three. They were chewy and moist, shiney and salty. I think it took me until the third one before I realized I hadn't even got the mustard out. If there is a good reason that sourdough wouldn't be suitable for this kind of pretzel, then it remains completely illusive to me.

By the time it came to take the fancy staged shot of the best looking specimens, I had only four left. What the hell am I TALKING about? As you can tell by the technical quality of the shots I usually post, I shoot them myself using a vintage 2.0 mega-pixel digital with a fixed optical lens, usually resulting in me taking a bunch of pics to get one that isn't blurry, lacking in focal depth completely, or unrepresentative of what was in the tiny screen. And that doesn't even address the lighting issues of living in a 1950's kitchen with one window, located four feet from the place next door.

Whew! Am I complaining or what? What I'm really trying to say is that as a complete amateur, with bad equipment, generally poor lighting and what I consider a VERY hit and miss eye, I'm a little embarassed with some of the stuff I post sometimes. And then I think of having been in therapy and how this isn't really about you is it? Then I post a shot that may not be entirely aesthetically pleasing, but sums up the experience. If others out there take photos qualifying for "food porn" then maybe my work would be more aptly called "food trade journal" or something else that just screams function rules over artistic beauty. I guess it was this type of thinking that has prompted me to start being better about writing a recipe and posting that alongside.



There they are: shiney, salty, golden and pretty much boring to look at. They might not be some fancy, 20 something step elaborate thing that leaves folks intrigued with the delicate combination of spice and stem, saying things like "this is so unbelievably tasty! Shit, I'd pay at least 30 bucks for that if it was on a menu somewhere." No this one is more like standard fare from those dreamy distant childhood memories. You know, where without any chemical interference you relished in kicking your legs while spinning round and round getting dizzy riding a wooden horse, while one of your parents was in the snack bar saying "A BUCK FIFTY? DO I LOOK LIKE I'M MADE OUT OF MONEY OR SOMETHING? HELL, I CAN MAKE THEM MYSELF FOR LESS THAN THAT!"

Only this parent does go home and make them himself..........

D's Sourdough Pretzels (A work in progress):

2/3 cup sourdough starter
1 cup warm water
3 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 T sugar
1 T olive oil
1 t table salt
Coarse grained salt of choice (I was thinking some of those colorful artisanal hoity-toity salts might be fun to dress these up with and call them something like: Rinpoche's Karmic Knots or maybe Honua's Ono Salted Pahoehoe)

Mix starter, water, oil, flours and salt. Adjust flour until you have a nice ball of dough (keep it soft though). Knead until smooth and set aside to rise in a warm place (at least a few hours). Punch dough down, form into a big rectangle and begin cutting off strips to work with as individual pretzels. Give the pretzels your version of the "knot" and place to rise on parchment/waxed paper to rise. When fully risen (more or less doubled) lower carefully into a large pot of boiling water with baking soda dissolved in it (I saw a number of recipes that did this and it just felt right, so I used at least 1/2 a cup per 4 quarts of H2O). Turn over after about a minute and boil for another. Remove with the biggest slotted spoon-like thing you have and place on a rack to drain. I found that putting them back on the parchment at a slight angle from horizontal aided drainage. I arranged as many as I could on a perforated round pizza pan and carefully brushed them with an egg-white wash and immediately sprinkled them generously with coarse salt. They baked for about 12-13 minutes in a 450+ oven and looked toasty and yummy at that point.

I did not have any beer in the house, but I suspect that something dark and heady would compliment these quite nicely. But with today's beer prices, I guess I'll just have to try making some myself to go along with them sometime.....