“Pretzels”

For the past few weeks, most of our days have included some variation of rubbing handfuls of Vaseline into the carpet.  We were in need of a reset, a break in the cycle.  Logically, that meant spending an afternoon making pretzels. 

Essential pretzel making tools include flour, yeast, salt, boiling water, rolling pin, ladle, cookie scoop, and garlic press.

I haven’t studied the finer aspects of bread making, so I don’t know the technical term for dough that seems to have tendons in it.  It was so elastic that holding the actual shape of a pretzel was impossible.  Luckily we weren’t at risk of being thrown out of the duchy if we couldn’t produce a bread that the morning sun could shine through three times.  (Eric Carle’s Walter the Baker anyone?  We have it checked out from the library right now and it’s making its way into the bedtime rotation most nights.)

They didn’t look like pretzels, and although very tasty hot out of the oven, they didn’t taste like the soft pretzels I know from malls and amusement parks.  As Trent put it when we greeted him with one after work, “Mmmm, tastes like salty bread.”  The boiling and baking was all worth it, because the stretching and kneading and ladling of the dough was, at most, therapeutic for little hands that are constantly busy, and at the very least something to keep those hands from adding more pen marks to the refrigerator.

Coincidentally, that night was my very first attempt at “the warmth and ease of Indian cooking.”  The recipe ended with “Serve with rice or any kind of bread.”  It just so happened that we had “any kind of bread.”