Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Oktoberfest: The Pretzels

I made 64 miniature soft pretzels for our Oktoberfest party on Saturday night and not one of them made it to the end of the party. I'm glad they didn't; when you're serving 5 different types of really tasty beer, it's best to have some pretzels on hand to soak it all up.

I'm so craving soft pretzels today I might just have to whip up a non-miniature batch and eat one right when it comes out of the oven. They were so soft and chewy and salty and delicious it was easy to overlook how horribly shaped they were. We had many a laugh during our marathon pretzel baking session about all the poor horribly misshaped little pretzels that we had created. They were like little Frankensteins - really delicious Frankensteins.

Despite the work involved in baking them - they were worth it. The dough comes together easily, and rises easily, but right about the time you're putting your 4th or 5th batch in the simmering baking soda bath to poach, you start to think that maybe they're not going to be worth all the work. You're wrong, silly person. They're totally worth it.

(Click here for the recipe, which came from Martha by way of Smitten Kitchen.)

10 comments:

Dan said...

Sounds wonderful, but I'm curious about how to make crispy pretzels. Do you think a recipe like this would come out crispy if I double-baked it?

Sara said...

I think those have a rustic kind of beauty to them!

Kelly Sime said...

they look delicious!

Unknown said...

Dear lord those look amazingly good. I'm sure all I'm going to be thinking about for the next couple of days now is pretzels.

Sara said...

I've seen recipes for hard pretzels where it is the same procedure, just with less water and the addition of melted butter to the batter. So, I think with this recipe I'd decrease the water by 1/4 to 1/2 c and add 1/2 a stick of melted butter....you'd have to bake them a little longer, and maybe make them thinner to crisp them up better, but if you kept your eyeballs on them this should be an easy variation. If you try it, Dan, let me know how it turns out!

Anonymous said...

You could always fry 'em to make them crispy. That's my life motto anyway.

1. I didn't realize you made that many pretzels.
2. I didn't realize I had so many of them. Sorry.

- jw

Dan said...

Thank you, Sara - I think I might try that some evening this week.

Hillary said...

Great pretzels! Here are some more great Oktoberfest recipes!

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