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 Shaping the pretzels—think of it as creativity with food! |
Meals Kids Might Eat:
Food Projects
by Jyotsna “Jo” Sreenivasan, from the April 2007 newsletter
April 23-29 is TV Turn-off Week (http://www.tvturnoff.org). Watching less TV can lead to more exercise and better eating habits for kids. If your family is contemplating turning off the TV and videos for this week, you might be wondering: what should we do instead?
How about – food projects! Try making homemade pizza or creating sushi rolls (both recipes are on the Co-op web site). Or you might like to have a tea party. My sons occasionally enjoy laying out their miniature tea set and serving mini amounts of food. I make an herbal tea with chamomile or rooibos for their teapot.
Or – you could try these delicious homemade soft pretzels. They are time-consuming to make but worth it.
Homemade Soft Pretzels
(Adapted from Honest Pretzels by Mollie Katzen)
This recipe makes 32 small soft pretzels. You cook the pretzels in two steps: first you boil them, and then you bake them.
1 ¼ cups lukewarm water
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
3 to 3 ½ cups unbleached white bread flour, plus extra for handling dough
1 ¼ teaspoons salt
4 cups of water
5 teaspoons baking soda
Parchment paper or waxed paper
Oil for the baking pan
Salt and/or sesame seeds to sprinkle on the pretzels (optional)
Make the dough:
Pour the lukewarm water into a bowl, and add the yeast and sugar.
Stir in one tablespoon of the melted butter.
Add three cups of flour and the salt, and mix well, using your clean hands to knead the dough briefly. If the dough is too sticky, add the extra ½ cup of flour.
Pour the extra tablespoon of melted butter over the ball of dough, and swish the dough around so it gets coated with the butter.
Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for an hour or so.
Shape the pretzels and bake them:
Oil a baking sheet generously. If you like you can sprinkle the oiled sheet
with sesame seeds. This will help prevent the pretzels from sticking to the
baking sheet, and will add flavor.
Line a second baking with parchment paper or waxed paper. This will be used to hold the shaped but unboiled pretzels. I sprinkled my parchment paper with flour to prevent the pretzels from sticking.
Fill a pot of water with four cups of water and 5 teaspoons of baking soda. Bring to a boil. If you are working with kids you might delay doing this until about half the pretzels are already formed.
Put oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat oven to 450 degrees F.
When the dough is ready, press it down and place it on a floured work surface. Divide the dough in half and put one half aside in the covered bowl. If you only want to make 16 pretzels today, put this second half of the dough in an airtight container and store in the freezer.
Divide the dough on the work surface into 16 equal portions. You can do this easily by cutting the dough in half, and cutting the halves in half, until you have 16 portions.
Using floured hands, roll or stretch each portion of dough into a snake of about 12 inches (or even longer).
Shape the snake into a pretzel shape or any shape you like. For a traditional pretzel shape, make a circle out of the snake, cross the ends, cross them again, and then bring the ends down onto the circle and press firmly. The shapes do not have to be perfect. Even misshapen pretzels will taste wonderful. Place each pretzel carefully on the parchment paper or waxed paper.
Bring your formed pretzels over near the boiling water. Have the oiled baking sheet nearby (preferably on the other side of the pot of water).
Flip a pretzel from the parchment or waxed paper onto your hand and place it carefully in the boiling water. Do this with two or three pretzels, and then set a time for one minute. The pretzels will swell and stiffen during this boiling. Apparently this boiling process gives the pretzel a firm skin and adds flavor.
When the timer rings, use a slotted spoon to lift each pretzel out of the water and onto the oiled baking sheet.
Continue until you have boiled all the pretzels.
At this point you can sprinkle salt on the boiled pretzels if you like.
Put the tray of pretzels into the oven and set the timer for 8 minutes.
When the timer rings, take the tray out of the oven and turn each pretzel over. In my experience, these pretzels do tend to stick, so use a thin metal spatula and try your best to scrape the pretzel up whole.
Bake the turned-over pretzels again for 7 minutes.
Take the out of the oven, cool briefly, and enjoy!
You can make the other 16 pretzels now if you like. Your family may have demolished the first batch by the time the second batch comes out of the oven.
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