Sunday, November 9, 2008

Soft Pretzels

I absolutely love this recipe for German Soft Pretzels from Grant Achatz. Who's he, you may ask? He's the genius at Alinea in Chicago. He's the incredible young (34!) chef who got tongue cancer - his treatment worked, he's cancer-free now. But can you believe the irony, the complete unfairness, that a chef of his brilliance could have lost his tongue?

(In addition to being an awesome chef, he's also absolutely adorable.)

Where was I? Oh. Yeah. Pretzels. OK, on to the pretzels - it's kind of a fiddly recipe, what with the rising, shaping, rising, boiling for 30 seconds, draining, baking. But it's so worth it.
















Puffy, crunchy, salty, with that unique pretzelly flavor - I'm not sure if that's from the brown sugar, the baking soda in the water, or both. Maybe I'll investigate.

Or maybe I'll just have another pretzel.

5 comments:

Peabody said...

Homemade soft pretzels...I don't make them anymore since I eat them all! Yours are making me crave some though.

Betts said...

How cool! That's something I never thought of making. Fiddly or not, I may have to try.

Vicki said...

Hi Peabody - I halved the recipe and made 12 - they were all gone by the time we went to bed :)

Hi Betts - Try! It's fussy, but fun. And you get to eat them after :)

Anonymous said...

I've been wanting to make pretzels, and these look awesome.

Vicki said...

Hi Lisa -
They're worth the effort, believe me!