And We’re Live With Pretzels in Three, Two, One…

Good morning all, and hey, look at that, I’m not dead! It’s been a busy (read: exhausting) couple of weeks in my little corner of Canuckistan, and, alas, cutting corners in the area of blogging was more socially-acceptable than cutting corners in areas such as, say, personal hygiene.

So here I am, back in the as-it-were saddle of the internet, once again loading my digital cannonry to fire bytes upon bytes of pure chaos in your general direction.

So here we go: First post back, and, as I am gravely indebted to Lady Jess, I took a request: “Blog about pretzels!”

Here, then, I am: Blogging about pretzels.

First, so we can establish what’s going on, an illustrative picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, yours truly in kitchen battle garb:

Let’s begin. You will need (assuming you actually want to make pretzels here) the following:

1 tablespoon yeast;

1 tablespoon maple syrup*

3 cups all-purpose flour*

2 tablespoons margarine or butter, softened*

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup very warm water (but not boiling)

You will also need:

Two cookie sheets, a small or medium saucepan or pot partly full of water, and roughly a tablespoon of baking soda.

Toppings (coarse salt, black pepper, oregano, Montreal Steak Spice, dried crushed chilies, parmesan cheese, etc)*

*All these ingredients can be substituted for an equal amount of a similar ingredient; maple syrup can be replaced with honey, white sugar, brown sugar, or even Pepsi; flour can be replaced with hard whole wheat flour if you prefer it; I tend to use olive or vegetable oils instead of margarine or butter and, of course, toppings are completely at your own discretion.

Let’s Begin:

Place your yeast and your maple syrup into a medium-large bowl as shown below, adding the oil.

Add the salt

And stir it all up well. Then add the water,

one cup of the flour, and mix very well. The mixture will start to bubble; leave it alone for about five minutes.

After about five minutes, stir in the rest of the flour. The dough should be slightly sticky but not too difficult to work with; turn it out on a lightly floured board and knead.

If the dough persists in sticking to your hands or the work surface, work more flour into it as you knead. Knead for approximately five minutes, then return it to the bowl and allow it to rise in a warm place until it doubles in size (or about sixty to eighty minutes).

Remove the dough from the bowl, punch it down, knead it again for about five minutes, and divide it into twelve equal parts. Roll each of these pieces into a pipe between twelve to eighteen inches long. You now have two options:

1: Cut the pipe into three four-to-six-inch pretzel sticks, or

2: Twist each pipe into the traditional pretzel shape. As you can see below, I took this option with my latest batch.

As you’re shaping the pretzels, put the tablespoon of baking soda into your pot of water and bring it to a boil; you should also, at this time, begin pre-heating the oven to 475. You’re going to boil the pretzels for about a minute on each side, remove them from the water with a slotted spoon, allow them to drain for a moment, and put them on your cookie sheet.

You should add your seasonings to the pretzels the moment they come out of the pot; you can either have a dish of seasoning standing by to press the pretzels into gently, or sprinkle the toppings on.

The pretzels, once they are all boiled, bake at 475 for 12-15 minutes, or until they are golden brown, thus:

Enjoy!

Be sure to drop in on Thursday for “Things That Are Cool: LibriVox"!