Pretzels at Home

Since the Browns game was borderline unwatchable, I decided to try my hand at making Sherry Yard's Soft Pretzel recipe from Dessert by the Yard. The pictures looked like the real deal. The appearance of those pictured in her book looked like the ones you kind find around Lancaster County, PA. I wanted to try and make the shiny, dark brown versions you find at the numerous Amish stores in the area.

 Soft Pretzel

Here's a link to the Soft Pretzel recipe from Sherry Yard's, Dessert by the Yard.

A few notes:

• The recipe is well written. Follow it to the letter and you should have - at the very least - edible pretzels.

• This recipe is more Auntie Anne's than Pennsylvania Dutch. There's a light crispiness to them instead of the chewier, dark shiny version that you find at the ballpark or from the Amish.

• My pretzels ended up looking like the ones you see in the linked blog that has the recipe. Perhaps I chickened out and didn't cook them long enough, but I just felt if they went any longer they'd burn. Since this was my first try at pretzels, I'll continue to try and figure out how to make the dark shiny ones.

• I used Great Lakes Brewing's Oktoberfest amber ale in the simmering mixture

• Each dough ball should weigh about 60 grams. These make for nice miniature snacks. They are not the big monster pretzels you typically associate with soft pretzels.

• Find a very course pretzel salt. Kosher salt just doesn't give the same texture as the pebbly pretzel salt. It's like trying to substitute turbinado sugar with granulated - it's just not the same. The salt in my picture is actually from Hawai'i. I purchased this for Regina from The Meadows. They have an excellent selection of salt and chocolate.

Like most of the recipes in this book, you really have to carve out a little bit of time in your day to make it. This isn't something that you just whip together and throw in the oven. At the same time, this isn't what I would consider a technically difficult recipe to execute, either.