Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

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Soft Pretzels

Posted February 21, 2010
Find more about bread , yeast , snacks , pretzels
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These are so satisfying to bake, and everybody loves them.

If it's warm, let your dough rise there. Wherever it is.

We use a yardstick to measure our ropes of dough.

And we all have different rolling methods. This is a Sunday morning, hence the jammies. (I think someone was wondering if the kids actually wore pajamas for their whole lives.)

I like the different styles of shaping.

I had actually planned to make pretzel hearts for Valentine's Day, but then forgot.

I've never made bagels, but I think the process is similar. I'm going to try it for sure.

Look how beautiful!

Plus, should you happen to be heading to a yeasted carnival, they make great masks.

For me, though, it is all about the mustard. Yellow mustard. Yum.

For me, a soft pretzel is one of those Proust's-Madeleine type of foods that evokes a host of fragrant, salted, mustardy memories. Childhood, for one. In New York City, where I grew up, there were pretzel vendors every half dozen blocks or so, the air around them thick and smoky with the charring of something--either the pretzels themselves, or maybe the chestnuts that were sometimes roasting burntly nearby on a foil-lined grill. Summertime at the vending carts meant Italian ice: melting, pleated paper cups of soft cherry or lemon that dripped cold, bright stickiness onto your sandals and feet when you squoze them. But winter was Sabrett hot dogs--garlicky heaven in a natural casing, fished from a murky well that seemed to be filled with steaming human limbs. And those soft pretzels, so big and chewy and bland and salty and singed, like beige play-dough that had been twisted and then run under the broiler. I have no memories of watching the actual Mets play actual baseball: periods, quarters, innings? Whatever. Shea Stadium, for me, will always be craning your neck around to see when the pretzels were headed your way--just as Giant's Stadium meant coloring in your coloring book while you waited freezingly for the hot-chocolate vendor.

My soft-pretzel life picked up again in Santa Cruz, where Michael and I happily lived out our twenties. We were biking distance from the Beach Boardwalk, where we spent all our winter laundry change on pinball, and then returned on summer Tuesdays for fifty-cents night, when fifty cents could get you a ride on the roller coaster, a choky pink puff of cotton candy, or a pretzel. "Salt or no salt?" They would rub your naked pretzel with a damp, dirty sponge before sprinkling it with what looked like driveway ice melt. I swear it was the same dirty sponge they rubbed your pretzel with at Costco, which was the other place we got soft pretzels. Costco! Was that really us, buying gallon-jugs of Baileys Irish Cream ("Shouldn't we just get a small bottle first and see how we like having it?" But Michael could not be reasoned with.) and gallon-jars of Nutella, gallon-loaves of cheddar cheese and gallon-bags of broccoli slaw, gallon-tubes of Colgate and gallon-boxes of Tampax? We skipped the one-ton tubs of Corey's Slug and Snail Death that every other shopped seemed to have in their carts (Santa Cruz must have been knee-deep in perishing gastropods) and rewarded ourselves at the snack stand with cheap soft pretzels and a soda-cup lid filled with mustard. Yum.

And now we have these pretzels to add to our catalogue of sensory nostalgia: homemade, whole-grain, fun to shape, and fully pretzel-like, thanks to the coarse salt and the boiling baking-soda bath.  Even the recipe fills me with memories: it's printed from an email that I sent a FamilyFun editor in 2003--a recipe I developed for a piece that never ended up running. February 20th, 2003, to be exact. Which means that 11 days before Birdy was born, I was boiling and baking and eating batch after batch of pretzels to get the recipe just right (and to make sure that my large barge of a fanny would sustain us through another long winter). Later, when newborn Birdy and I would have yeast in every possible orifice, I would think back to those doughy nights and wonder. But at the time, I was so wildly excited about Birdy coming that all I could muster was a kind of dry preemptive cynicism, as evidenced by the pretzel-recipe email sign-off: "My pelvic exam yesterday? She might as well have used a crow bar. Kill me. I hope you like the pretzels."

Soft Pretzels
Makes 12
Active time: 1 hour; total time 2 hours

I originally developed and made this pretzel recipe using all white flour, and they are certainly delicious that way. However, let me please make a case for adding a bit of whole-grain flour to them: the pretzels are not only more nutritious this way--they are also so much more fully flavored that we really, truly prefer them. All of us. Except for Michael. Who once ate a gallon of Nutella washed down with a gallon of Bailey's Irish Cream, so forget about Michael.

3/4 cup warm (not hot) water
1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt (or half as much table salt)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 3/4 cups flour (either all all-purpose, or a mix of all-purpose and whole-grain: I used 1 1/2 cups white, 3/4 cup whole wheat, and 1/2 cup rye, and I thought these pretzels were perfect)
1/4 cup baking soda
Coarse salt

In the bowl of a standing mixer, if you've got one, dissolve the yeast in the water, add the sugar, and let the mixture stand until it gets foamy (I actually never bother with the letting it stand part, but that's such a common yeast direction, I feel obligated to include it). Use a wooden spoon to stir in the oil and salt, then the flour, until a dough forms. Now knead it, either with the dough hook or by hand, until the dough is quite smooth and springy--about 5 minutes by hand, a bit less in the machine. If the dough seems too dry or moist as you're kneading it, add a tiny bit more water or flour as needed. And kneaded.

Oil the dough in the bowl, cover it with a dish towel, and let it rise in a warm place until it's more or less doubled in size, about an hour.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or grease them lightly. Cut the dough into twelve pieces, roll each into a skinny 18-inch-long rope, and twist into a pretzel shape. As the pretzels are shaped, move them to the prepared baking sheets; keep the unused dough pieces covered with a dish towel while you work. Cover the finished pretzels with the dish towel and leave to rise for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat the oven to 475 and, in a wide pot, bring 12 cups of water to a boil, then add 1/4 cup baking soda. Drop 3 or 4 pretzels at a time into the boiling water, boil for a minute, then fish them with a slotted spoon or skimmer, shake them a bit, and lay them back on the baking sheet (I don't dry them off). Sprinkle the pretzels with coarse salt, then bake them for around 12 minutes, more or less in the center of the oven, switching the pans top to bottom and front to back halfway through; they should be deeply golden and dry to the touch when they're done. Cool briefly on a rack and serve warm with mustard.

 

Get a printable version of this recipe.

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Soft Pretzels

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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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