Last weekend was a good one for many reasons. First and foremost-our Benson’s came to visit. Secondly, it was LDS General Conference-that blessed time of year when we get to watch church on TV in our jammies. Thirdly-we celebrated our adopted German heritage and made legit german pretzels. From scratch. All by ourselves. The Benson’s were kind enough to pack along some weißwurst & mustard, spezi and almduddler so we had an authentic German brunch. It was a weekend for the books.
We used the recipe from Das Cookbook-my new favorite German cookbook. You make the dough and let it rise and then you split it into balls-we doubled the recipe so it made 16 pretzels.
You roll the balls into 10-12 ropes and let them rest.
Then you stretch those ropes to 16-18 and shape them into pretzels.
Or mickey mouses.
After an hour in the fridge, you dip the pretzels in food-grade lye. I don’t know who’s idea this EVER was because lye is super caustic and kind of scary to work with.
The super-scary lye wash is completely worth it though because you get these beautiful dark brown pretzels that taste like you’re in Bavaria. They are 100% not the same at all if you don’t do the wash, so buy the lye!