Homemade Pretzels

by Maybelle's Mom

Thursday October 09, 2008, 10:16 AM

Pretzels-baking might get you engaged...

What? They say bake a frozen pie before a date comes over to play to that person's sense of smell. I think, one simple batch of pretzels can fill your kitchen with hopespun, fresh-baked amazingness that you would impress any suitor far more than that apple-pie.

Making pretzels turns out to be super easy. We made them to pair with cocktails for a big dinner party. We had planned to freeze them the weekend before and pop them in the oven the day of. And so, the Saturday before our big party, we found a recipe on Epicurious.com, and attempted to follow it. The pretzels that resulted were alright. Attractive enough, puffy enough, but nothing special. In fact, they were so middling that we were tempted to pass frozen soft pretzels as homemade.

Then we turned to my good blogger friend Maggie from Dog Hill Kitchen. She had a fantastic recipe for pretzels that might in fact be foolproof. I followed her recipe exactly. (Not something I do often.)

And, how do you get the pretzel shape? This is probably the hardest thing. I will explain it in words, but really the pictures are easier to understand.

Twist the perfect pretzel
1. make a snake
2. bring up the ends
3. give it two twists
4. fold the twists down.

Apologies Cage Free Tomato for publishing early by accident and thanks to E. for catching a typo.