[Sca-cooks] Pretzels

[Chris Stanifer]

--- Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com> wrote:

> Are you asking if they were boiled in "malted" water? That is with an 
> M? I'd like hear why you think of that as a period thing to do. What 
> else was boiled in malted water?


Well, without further resources to check, I have no reason to think it was a period thing to do,
other than my own culinary instincts (assuming that the more basic instincts would have been
pretty much the same).  If you want a slightly sweet crust to your pretzel, and you're going to
boil it anyway, you might as well use water with malt in it.  Or honey, I suppose, though I have
no recipes (modern or otherwise) which call for boiling pretzels in honey water.  I do, however,
have recipes which call for boiling them in water with malt in it.  I'm assuming (totally
assuming) that this may well have been the process used in the middle ages, and survived to this
day.

The 'malted water' I mention is just that... water with malt in it (either extract or syrup or
what-have-you).  

I really wish there were more surviving bakery recipes... I would love to know the techniques and
methods used in medieval baking and pastry.  And shame on the woman, somewhere on this list or
another, who claimed that "sugar was so expensive in the middle ages, that no self respecting cook
would have dared use it for something so base as a pie or candy."  But, that's another thread
entirely...
> 
> I toured one of the pretzel companies in Pennsylvania several years 
> ago. I think they claimed to have started in the 17th century with 
> recipes brought over from the Old World. I seem to remember them 
> talking about boiling the pretzels in something. I thought lye but I'm 
> not sure now. 


It may well have been lye.  Per my previous post, I'm assuming that the lye treatment is for hard
pretzels, but I'll double check.

William de Grandfort











=====
Every heart to love will come... but like a refugee.


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
The all-new My Yahoo! - Get yours free! 
http://my.yahoo.com