Here’s my confession of the day: I’m a lazy baker. If there
is a mock recipe, a mix, a shortcut, I’ll take it. I used to think I liked bread making. There
was something therapeutic about kneading the dough and smelling the baking
bread. But somewhere between the bread machine craze of the 90s, my 70 hour
work weeks when I temporarily lost my soul to retail, and two kids two years
apart, I changed my mind. It’s cheaper, I said. The yeast went bad, I
explained. I just don’t have the time, was my final excuse. But, in reality, I
just don’t like it. My back, my time and my sanity won’t allow it anymore. The
therapy does not outweigh the effort.
So two weeks ago, Jessica and I had the house to ourselves for
five days. The guys were at camp, and I had plans, grand plans. Jessica (with a
little help and support from me) would clean, de-clutter and empty her room, buy
paint and redecorate. I would clean the house to a pre-Christmas state. Jessica
and I would come up with healthy meal plans and find new ways to eat well and
get in shape. Yeah, right.
Instead, we went out to eat, ran a million errands and
watched a lot of Netflix and Youtube.
We did go to Kroger to pick up some food
for the week, though. That was sort of on my list. Before we went, I asked Jessica what she
wanted to make, and she said she wanted to make soft pretzels. Mall pretzels. Ugh.
Now you see why I bought up baking. I have never made pretzels because they
have too many steps. I like two step recipes. 1. Mix everything together 2.
Cook it. Pretzel recipes have more than two steps. Many more. I was tempted to pull the
you-never-worked-on-your-room-so you’r- getting’-nothin’-card, but I decided to
try another tactic. “I think they have soft pretzels in the freezer section at Kroger.”
That was plan A “No, I really want to make them.” She said. “We can have a
whole appetizer night with honey-barbecue wings, mozzarella cheese sticks, and
the pretzels. Come on Mom. It will be fun.”
I did say we were going to make healthier choices, right?
What happened to that?
I went into a mild panic when she started talking about
making the cheese sticks from scratch, too. I was able to talk her out of that
since the frozen cheese sticks cost less than a bag of mozzarella string
cheese. That was a close one.
I had glanced over a couple of recipes for the pretzels
before we hit the store. All we needed was yeast, so we grabbed that and the rest of our junk and headed home.
The next thing I had to do was choose a recipe. I found a great quick pretzel recipe that I wanted to try, but it didn't pass the Jessica test. The comments said they tasted more like rolls and there was no rising and extensive kneading involved. Here is a link to it, though if you have baking issues like me: http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2012/12/25/30-minute-whole-wheat-pretzels/
I was tired of feeling like the laziest and most boring mom in the world, so I gave in. We found a standard recipe here: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/buttery-soft-pretzels/, and went to work.
Our first challenge was getting the water the right temp to activate the yeast without killing it. I think this has been my main problem with baking in the past, but this time I decided I would use my candy thermometer to check. Yeah, that didn't work, because it is evidently perpetually stuck at 30 degrees. I tried a meat thermometer next, but that didn't work either, so I finally pulled out a digital oral thermometer and maxed it out to get the temp to a perfect 110 degrees.
To be honest, after that, it wasn't so bad, just a little time consuming. We read the comments below the recipe and noticed that most people needed less flour that the 5 cups called for, so we started with 2 cups of whole wheat flour (healthy, right?) and 1 cup of unbleached and added a mix of the two as we were kneading.
Oh, and the pretzels were pretty tasty. In fact, maybe I'll bake a loaf of bread or some cinnamon rolls this week. Well, probably not.
