Brezel!! The magnificent pretzel! Let's go back to taste the real pretzel! history and traditional recipe.

Brezel

The story of Brezel:

The pretzels, or pretzl, is a type of bread spread mainly in German-speaking countries such as Austria, Germany, Switzerland and represents a symbol of the South Tyrolean cuisine. Composed primarily of wheat flour, malt, yeast and water, with the addition of baking soda, pretzels is often served as an appetizer and accompanied the veal sausages with sweet mustard in outline. In some regions it is also added lard or are used wholemeal flour, spelled and other grains.

Before cooking the pretzel are dusted with the addition of salt or sesame seeds, even if their peculiarity lies not only in the form, in the baking method said Laugengebäck. The bread, before cooking, is immersed for a few seconds in a solution of boiling water and caustic soda (or sodium bicarbonate in the home) which gives that typical shiny appearance, losing the causticity through baking in the oven.

The appearance of the pretzel is intertwined with history and legend, in an indissoluble bond that is visually the peculiarity of this tasty food. The first of these relates that pretzels are the oldest snack food to the world, its origin could even be traced back to the monasteries of southern France and northern Italy around 610 A.D. The monks, it seems, were inspired by intertwined arms of children in prayer for the shape of this bread that was given them as a reward for having learned to memory verses and prayers of the Bible. You can not escape, the more careful, the holes formed by the intertwining of pasta are three; a number that, from this perspective, recalls the Holy Trinity.

To confirm this hypothesis, as in the stories handed down from antiquity, it seems to think the name of this bread. It derives in fact from the Latin pretiola (reward), Italianate later as brachiola and finally turned into pretzels from the spread between the German-speaking populations.

Different, and equally fascinating, is the story relative to the dough, the cooking and enriched by the appearance toasted grains of salt as the timid of snowflakes lying on hard ground made from winter frost. Around 1620, according to legend, pretzels arrived in the United States no less than aboard the Mayflower, the ship in which the Pilgrim Fathers began the colonization of America. In Pennsylvania, where he initially spread, it seems to be born the last variant that still know today.

The story goes that a baker's apprentice fell asleep while cooking pretzels and awoke with the conviction that the bread was not yet ready because of the fire off, gave them a second firing, indurendoli. The holder of the oven, including the crime, went on a rampage except change his mind after tasting the unintended result. The pretzel, in fact, showed excellent both in consistency that of taste, preserving itself even better than those soft. The pretzels, since then, represent a specialty of Pennsylvania where in 1861, Lititz, was founded the first commercial activities for the production of this bread, which began to be served as an accompaniment to appetizers, salads, soups and meat dishes.

In Europe, in contrast, pretzels became the Easter food in Germany in 1450 and were even portrayed in a prayer book as early as 1190. Even today, the pretzels are seen as an omen of good fortune, prosperity and spiritual wholeness, as well as representing a real symbol of the German-speaking culinary tradition. A tasty food, flirty and elegant; perfect to be accompanied with a selection of veal sausages with sweet mustard, potato salad, sauerkraut, and to exalt the whole, a nice mug of beer Forst.

Ok! now that I've told you a bit of history I'll give the recipe that gave me a cook who worked in a shop that sold bread in Munich.

Ingredients:

500 g flour

300 g warm water

50 g butter, melted

30 g sodium bicarbonate

coarse salt

mixed seeds

fine salt

10 g of dry yeast

1 teaspoon sugar

Weigh all the ingredients:

Flour.

Butter.

Water.

Dry yeast.

sodium bicarbonate

coarse salt

mixed seeds

fine salt

1 teaspoon sugar

Dissolve yeast in water with a little teaspoon sugar.

Put the flour in the mixer, start the mixer to speed 1, adding the water with the yeast slowly until the dough is shaped. Add butter, salt. Knead for 10 minutes.