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Saturday night I took my second step into bread making in the WFO. My wife gave me a book by a French baker, now residing in Bath England. Richard Bertinet's book titled Crust, Bread to get your teeth into is a nice addition to anyone's artisan bread library. Full of excellent photography and easy to read information, I recommend it to anyone.
The pretzels were an interesting process as like many good breads they required the use of a ferment dough. When this ferment was added to the flour it took some real mixing/kneading to incorporate it fully. The recipe then specified 100g bits of dough be rolled out to 20cm (8 in) lengths and then formed into the pretzel shape. If found this to be impossible without the pretzel ending up being quite a bulbous knot, even before proofing a further 45-60 minutes. I rolled mine out to about to more like 16 inches in order to achieve a nice looking twist with some space between the arms. (As you will see in the photo below they still came out to be cubby little golden fella's!)
The results were wonderful. My wife commented how beautiful they were over and over, comparing them favorably to the photo in the book. They came out of the oven as the family was enjoying a board game together and needless to say the game was put on hold just as soon as the pretzels cooled long enough to eat. The two batches I made yielded 24 pretzels and they were half gone before the lights went out that night!
The pretzels were an interesting process as like many good breads they required the use of a ferment dough. When this ferment was added to the flour it took some real mixing/kneading to incorporate it fully. The recipe then specified 100g bits of dough be rolled out to 20cm (8 in) lengths and then formed into the pretzel shape. If found this to be impossible without the pretzel ending up being quite a bulbous knot, even before proofing a further 45-60 minutes. I rolled mine out to about to more like 16 inches in order to achieve a nice looking twist with some space between the arms. (As you will see in the photo below they still came out to be cubby little golden fella's!)
The results were wonderful. My wife commented how beautiful they were over and over, comparing them favorably to the photo in the book. They came out of the oven as the family was enjoying a board game together and needless to say the game was put on hold just as soon as the pretzels cooled long enough to eat. The two batches I made yielded 24 pretzels and they were half gone before the lights went out that night!
...enjoy every sandwich!
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