Teleidoscope

Sun, Mar 02, 2008

Pretzels

Posted at 8:08 pm MST to Technology

I'm feeling better. Yesterday I bought some multivitamins with a fair amount of iron in them, in a format that I can more or less swallow, and I think they are helping.

Today I did some real cooking and baking for the first time in a couple of weeks.

One loaf of bread (in a loaf pan, so I can make toasted xheese sandwiches for lonch this week).

Turkey Rissoto (I'll get a few more meals out of this batch, but this finishes my Thanksgiving turkey)

extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons butter

sweated with a little salt

1 cup of real imported from northern Italy arborio rice, 
sauteed in the onion, etc.

one bottle from a 4-pack of Glen Ellen Chardonnay, 2002

about 3 cups of turkey stock and meat

several dried porcini mushrooms and 
the 1/2 cup of water they soaked in

about a tablespoon of double-strength tomato paste

a quart of turkey broth, 
added gradually and allowed to cook down

salt 

grated parmesan

Risotto is amazingly smooth and creamy when you make it with arborio instead of brown rice.

My third project today was homemade soft pretzels, using a recipe adapted from the Foppish Baker, found through a pointer from Chaz Villette.

I cut the recipe in half, decreased the sugar even more, increased the water a little, and still could not get as much flour into the dough as the recipe called for. It's the same problem I had when I made the pasta a while back: the flour here is just so dry compared to most places that the proportions go off. I ended up with 7 plump pretzels instead of 10, boiled them briefly (in tap water: with 1200ppm sodium bicarbonate, I don't need to worry about a lye solution), then sprinkled them with kosher salt and baked them at 425 until they looked done, about 20 minutes.

Next time I need to roll them thinner, and also stick them together better: a few of them sort of unravelled into spirals while they were boiling. Or just shape them into bagels (leaving off the salt on top).

3/4 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup hot water plus a little
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon sugar
1 scant teaspoon pickling salt

2+ cups flour 
(the goal would be 2 2/4 cups, 
but I didn't come close)

They tasted very good. I'll have to do this again some time. Maybe I'll try a full batch some time when I am going to a party.

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