Let's Bake Stuff

One of my favorite things about Germany is the food. Specifically the soft salty pretzels that you can find in bakeries on just about any street in Germany. I usually stay at this cute littel hotel in Cologne, Germany that has a fabulous breakfast spread including pretzel bread. It’s basically a pretzel loaf and it’s heavenly with brie. Of course, after I discovered this amazing breakfast treat everyone I was staying with tried it as well so there was a fight every morning to see who could get the pretzel bread first. You’d think the hotel would have put out more bread.

Here’s the Guest House at Zur Quelle Hotel.

And here’s my favorite part, the outdoor patio. I spent MANY evenings here drinking wine or eating dinner. Sigh.

Downtown Cologne is so beautiful. So is the Kölner Dom — the massive cathedral right in the center of it all.

OK, back to the pretzels!

I haven’t been to Germany since February and I’ve been seriously craving a German pretzel. These are nothing like Auntie Annie’s or Wetzels or any other mall pretzel kiosk — these are the real deal and they are so delicious.

I’ve learned two things about pretzel making that are very important. One, you have to boil them. Don’t let people fool you by telling you that you can just put egg wash on pretzel dough and bake it. That does not a good pretzel make.

Trust me, you’re not going to get that perfectly chewy, golden pretzel if you’re simpy using egg wash.

Two, you have to use brown sugar in the dough. The great part about a good pretzel is that there’s a little hint of sweetness in the dough complimented by the big pieces of salt on top of the chewy pretzel.

German Pretzels
Ingredients:
-1/8 cup hot water
-1 package active dry yeast
-1 1/3 cups warm water
-1/3 cups brown sugar
-5 cups flour, plus a little extra for kneading
-coarse Kosher salt

Method:
Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

In a large bowl mix the hot water and yeast until the yeast dissolves and then stir in the warm water.

Add the brown sugar and mix well.

Slowly add 5 cups of flour to the mixture, stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the mixture is smooth and does not stick to the side of the bowl.

Knead the dough until it is stretchy and smooth.

Put the dough into a bowl and let it sit for about two hours to rise.

It’s so cool when dough rises.

Grease 1-2 cookie sheets very well with butter. Sprinkle each with coarse kosher salt. Set the sheets aside.

Pinch off a piece of pretzel dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll the dough into a rope 14 inches long and as thick as your thumb. Bend the rope into a u shape, cross one end of the rope over the other end. The ropes should cross about 3 inches from the tips. Twist the cross ends making a full turn. Fold the ends back, toward the middle of the U. Open the ends slightly to form a pretzel shape, press the ends into the dough firmly.

 
Fill a frying pan with water.

For each cup of water in the pan add 1 tablespoon of baking soda. Bring water to a gentle boil. Not too many bubbles.

Use a spatula to lower each pretzel into frying pan. Count very slowly to 30. Then lift the pretzel onto the greased and salted cookie sheet. Repeat until all the dough is used.

Sprinkle some kosher salt on top of the pretzels and put them in the oven.

Bake for 8 minutes or until the pretzels are golden brown.

I made 5 large pretzels and one big loaf using the dough but if you made them smaller you could probably make about 15-20.

To make your pretzel experience better, I suggest beer and German mustard. Just eating them plain is good too.  I do suggest eating them fresh out of the oven (well you know, give them a minute to cool first). If you plan to store them make sure and put them something that lets them “breathe” a little like a bread sack otherwise the salt will melt into them and they won’t be chewy.