Reader Mike writes in with this interesting tidbit on where the word “pretzel” may have come from: When I lived in Germany, there was a little bakery at the bottom of the hill that made fresh pretzels every day – and this being the South, they were lye pretzels. Regarding the origin of the term, […]
READ ONSince I started pretzels over a week ago, I’ve been inundated with myths I’d never heard of before. There’s the one about the baker’s apprentice who burned some bread “braids” while his master was out on morning deliveries. There’s the one about how the Swiss gave them as gifts at wedding ceremonies, thus giving birth […]
READ ONIs this a Joe-style afternoon snack or what? Home made pretzels are another one of those things that will amaze you for their simplicity and make you wonder if you can ever be happy with the store-bought variety again. As you already know from the recipe below, my version calls for a stater. You want […]
READ ONWhat would any tour of bogus food myths be without at least a stop at the Battle of Vienna in 1683, the most baking-intensive conflict in the history of man? Quite poor, methinks. To get a sense for how this one goes, start with the standard story about how the croissant originated there, and merely […]
READ ONReader Jacki writes in with this: You mention a “chewy” inside. Does this mean you have been talking about soft pretzels this whole time? I thought it was hard pretzels that you had been describing. Could you clarify, and maybe explain the difference between the two? I certainly can — because historically speaking, they’re one […]
READ ONThose questions all came in over the weekend, and they’re good ones. I’m no chemist, but I’ll do my best to answer. Lye is an alkaline substance, which in chemical terms means it’s on the opposite side of the pH scale relative to an acid, but that doesn’t mean it’s harmless. A strong alkaline, like […]
READ ONYou may have heard a rumor that you can only make truly authentic pretzels by using dangerous chemicals. That’s pretty much true. Lye has been an important part of the pretzel-making process for hundreds of years. However it’s not essential. You can make very serviceable pretzels without it. This recipe includes instructions for both. It’s […]
READ ONReader Michael F. submits this whopper by way of his Scottish grandmother: The Pretzel was Roman, but they invented it when they invaded the British Isles…they took English wheat to make their traveling biscuits but it was too soft to make the hard biscuits that they made with their own flour so the shape was […]
READ ONI love this one for the sheer inventiveness of it. It regards a young baker (variously referred to as an Italian, a German, Frenchman, even a colonial American) falsely accused of a crime (usually theft or fraud). The poor fellow is called before the local magistrate and sentenced to prison — with one caveat. If, […]
READ ONA radically different story about the origin of pretzels credits American Indians, who as the story goes had an ingenious method for preventing animals from making off with surplus wheat. They’d store it in rings of unleavened dough that they baked on hot rocks, then strung over the branches of trees a dozen or more […]
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