Pretzels

Snowed in so time to make comfort food. I used Alton Brown’s recipe ( http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe.html)

Looks great! Did you make some mustard to go with those :slight_smile:

Use that recipe all the time.  We’ve found that not using baking soda or the egg wash and just using the traditional lye makes them perfect.

Those look great in the picture!!

Paul

+1 on lye.

looks like pretzel and beer time!

My wife uses that recipe to make pretzels all the time. Just finished the last batch yesterday though, so no pictures to share.

She still uses baking soda for the boil, but she tweaked the recipe a bit. They turn out a bit soft/light, but if you throw them in the oven for a while to reheat the final result is about right.

I used baking soda. Never tried lye.

I served them with a German senf.

Though I used sugar, I heard to sub DME for the sugar also.

Awesome looking.  Just need a wurst plate with some mustard. But you make the sausage too, right ?

Rgr that. I’ll make Cotto Salami, Kielbasa, Brats, Canadian Bacon, and Summer Sausage tomorrow. Also brewing a Maibock.

That’s just awesome.

Teach me Jedi master…I want to make salami

You’ll need a grinder and stuffer. After that it’s easy. Grind the meat. Add the spices and cure. Stuff the casing. Cook the sausage.

…and for the big sausage you don’t even really need a stuffer. Just grind it, mix in the spices and cure, and dollop into the casing (ensuring to remove all air).

I made/cured all the meats on this board:

Senf=Mustard. Really liked the sharf Senf!

Next is cheese?  Looks wonderful, dude!  Excellent job!!

So Bama, what stuffer do you use?

BrewBama - that’s beyond impressive. Those meats look amazing. Retail worthy.

Just a kitchen aide stand mixer.

Whoa. This definitely deserves The Wurst Thread.  8)
someone should start it and make Bama show us his skillz.
Dang.

First, these are beautiful! Phil_M and I love pretty much all of AB’s applications (we do have 4 of his cookbooks). Secondly, I just recently had an adventure with this recipe, having made it a few times before.

I’m big into whole grains and I make all our bread from scratch, so I have lots of whole wheat flour on hand and prefer it to white flour in most everything. Also, Phil_M just washed his first batch of yeast, so I was eager to use it in multiple recipes. Naturally, I put the two together to attempt to make a batch of pretzels. After an hour and a half, the dough had not risen one iota in bulk fermentation…partially due to heavy whole grains, partially due to my complete lack of experience with fresh yeast…etc. I even had it sitting in the dehydrator for warmth in the winter. So, I googled how to revive “dud” dough, and found the following advice: take the dud dough and mix it with the water, sugar, salt, and twice the yeast called for in the original recipe. Mix well, then proceed as usual with the rest of the ingredients and method for a single recipe (essentially doubling it). I used all-purpose flour this time around, the dough rose beautifully, and I ended up with a ton of rich brown, 50% whole wheat pretzels!