And then I made pretzels
Actually…I only made 1 pretzel.
I was perusing a favorite food blog this morning and saw a recipe for a Breakfast Sandwich on a pretzel roll. I hadn’t had my own breakfast yet. The sandwich looked so good and the pretzel roll sounded wonderful.
One thing led to another and I decided to experiment. Messing in the kitchen with dough is heavenly to me. And usually the results are edible and smell good while getting there.
I used my favorite riff of the Portuguese Broa from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day. My mix is 2 cups white and/or white whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup semolina flour and 1/2 cup cornmeal. I use this mix for mini-boules, english muffins, pita, naan and pizza crust. The only difference is in how the dough is handled and baked. For the pretzel rolls, the first step is shaping the rolls and letting them warm and rise a bit. I decided to try a roundish roll and flatter english muffin sized shapes…and as long as I was experimenting, I made one bit of dough into a snake and then formed a large pretzel…hee – that’s fun! (the apple is in the photo for some size reference – it is a medium sized apple)
Next, into the boiling water. The water is frothy from baking powder. The recipe calls for baking soda and cream of tartar but I didn’t have any cream of tartar so I used baking powder. As a side note, it appears that the only difference if you want to make bagels, is that the water has baking powder and sugar…. There will be more experiments… And this round, I think I left them in the water a little too long. I had neglected to get my egg wash ready (next step) so was doing that while the dough was having its swim.
Brush with egg wash and add pretzel salt. I used my Celtic gray sea salt (a little too much in hindsight) and also experimented further with a seed mix (seed mix was perfect…think an everything bagel).
Oh, boy… What ??? – you say there were 4 items that went into the oven and only 3 in the photo ??? Huh…
I made a mustard dipping sauce for the pretzel.
These are very edible and were so much fun. Next round, I will shorten the time in the water and not so much salt. I had egg salad on the missing roll. The crunchy crust and soft center make a great roll or bun for a sandwich (breakfast or otherwise) or burger.