In the Year of Fearless Baking: Episode #5: Pretzels
Some things on my baking list aren’t actually frightening to take on per se. But these baked goods still possess a certain something, let’s call it mystery, which have caused them to remain beyond my comfort zone. Not quite intimidating, but definitely not within my usual realm.
Pretzels definitely fall within this category. I never really understood what made a pretzel a pretzel, and I didn’t really care to find out. I’ve always liked soft pretzels in theory, although generally find them pretty underwhelming in practice. They’re usually just too damn big, too damn doughy, and too damn bland.
The beauty of home cooking, of course, is that whatever gripes you may have with a particular food can be taken to task, and the offending characteristics summarily dismissed. Sometimes it takes a couple of tries, but it is almost always worth the extra effort.
By the way, I found out what makes a pretzel a pretzel: the shaped dough gets a quick soak in a very hot alkaline bath. The traditional substance used is lye, but you can get pretty great results with baking soda. The dough puffs up like a dumpling in the hot water, which for some reason I wasn’t expecting. When they come out of the drink, they get doused with a layer of egg wash and sprinkled with flake salt, and slid into a very hot oven.
I enjoyed my first pretzel the way it’s supposed to happen: accompanied with spicy mustard and a nice glass of beer. And I have to admit the totally stupid thing that came out of my mouth right away: “Oh my god, this tastes exactly like a pretzel!” Which is such a ridiculous and obvious thing to say. And yet, that particular fact had completely blown my mind. The mystery that had previously been associated with pretzels was gone, but had been instantly replaced with something else.
I think I partly expected that gaining more understanding about how these various baked goods are made would make them less interesting to me- that demystification would lead to disillusionment, and ultimately to boredom. What I’m finding is that exactly the opposite is true.
Tiny Henry clearly felt the same sense of wonder, but he didn’t get to taste test. Although I looked at a lot of recipes for reference, I ended up using this one.
