Pretzels

The large pink plastic bowl stood waiting to devour Hannah’s and I’s carefully measured ingredients, like it does every time Hannah and I make pretzels.  Hannah and I make pretzels for two reasons:

1) we are having a salt craving that cannot be stymied by cheese alone (we are true Wisconsinites; well Hannah almost is, she just missed the boarder by about 80 miles)

 2) We mentally can no longer face our piles of homework without a break.  Sometimes I wonder whether the yeast we put into the pretzels manages to creep down the hall and into our homework because our piles of homework always seem to rise more than our pretzels.

I could write a whole separate blog about all the times we make pretzels.  We have been slowly progressing towards creating the perfect imitation of an Auntie Annie’s pretzel.  We started with Hannah’s old pretzel recipe from third grade, and now use this recipe found at http://www.food.com/recipe/auntie-annes-pretzels-copycat-59462, with some modifications.  Last weekend, Tony and I ended discussing why our pretzels didn’t get the same brown crust as Auntie Annie’s.  Apparently, Hannah and I had been missing a big step in the pretzel process: boiling.  So this time when we were making pretzels, Hannah and I were being extra careful, hoping that this batch of pretzels would be our long desired Auntie Annie’s pretzels. 

As I was measuring out the salt (I was even using the official teaspoons, not just my cereal spoon, which my mom tells me is about a teaspoon), I said to Hannah, “Let’s measure very carefully, and follow all the directions precisely.” I spoke a moment too soon, because I accidently poured too much salt into the teaspoon, and it filled up past the brim.  As usual, Hannah saved the pretzels by quickly sticking her hand under the teaspoon and catching the excess salt.  I stared at her stupidly, humored at my own ineptitude to carefully measure.  After we mixed the dough, let it rise, and rolled it into pretzel shapes, we put on the water to being the boiling process.

Tony had briefly described the boiling process to me, but rather look up exactly how to boil pretzels, Hannah and decided to follow Tony’s vague directions.  As the water simmered, we added some baking soda (too much it turns out) to the water and then plopped in the pretzels for a 30-45 second bath.  We didn’t know how long to leave them in there, but this amount of time seemed to work out alright.  Then we baked them according to the directions. 

Overall, these pretzels were a large improvement over our last several batches, and we got the brown crust around them that we desired.  However, for about 8-9 cups of water, don’t put in more than about 2 teaspoons of baking soda.  The pretzels tasted a bit too much like baking soda.  The bottoms also got a little crispy, but that is probably the fault of our archaic oven.  If you’re an experienced baker, and know what else is missing in this recipe, let me know.  Otherwise, if you’re a newbie like me, I would wait a bit on this recipe until Hannah figure out a few more of the subtleties of pretzel making.  Don’t worry it won’t take us too long; we make pretzels at least once a week.