My husband is obsessed with pretzels. The joy that a slightly warm, soft baked pretzel brings him is disproportionate. And, unlike in Germany and the States, where soft pretzels are ubiquitous, they are hard to come by here. So, for a while I have been trying to perfect the pretzel. It has not been smooth sailing.
Throwing your pretzels into a cauldron of water feels somewhere between heresy and madness
Pretzels are tricky: as well as being made from bread dough, and therefore yeasted, they are boiled before baking, have a very distinctive flavour, and their shaping requires a certain knack. Getting them right was a labour of love. But now I’ve cracked it, which means you should be able to avoid my pitfalls. I bake a lot, but the pride I felt when I removed my latest batch from the oven – mahogany gloss on the outside, pale and chewy within – was unparalleled.
The origins of pretzels are not certain – possibly they came to us from Christian monks, and they certainly became associated with both Lent and Easter – but they have been........