GERMAN PRETZELS WITH THE BENSONS

DAS

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.

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We used the recipe from Das Cookbookwidth=1-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.

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You roll the balls into 10-12 ropes and let them rest.

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Then you stretch those ropes to 16-18 and shape them into pretzels.

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Or mickey mouses.

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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.

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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!

DAS