[Sca-cooks] bagels

[Stephen Bloch]

>
>>--- David Friedman <ddfr at daviddfriedman.com> wrote:
>>>It occurs to me, after reading Bear's post on pretzels and bagels, 
>>>that the word is probably related to "pretzel" and one could 
>>>interpret the recipe as a pretzel rather than a bagel recipe. Are 
>>>pretzels boiled and then baked?

William Grandfort, mka Chris Stanifer replied:

>>Yes, much like bagels, pretzels are first boiled and then baked.  I 
>>have seen (and use) recipes
>>which indicate boiling the pretzels in malted water (that is, water 
>>with malt in it), while most
>>of the recipes seem to indicate boiling in plain water.

and Cian (John Kemker) added:

>Pretzels are also sometimes boiled in water with a bit of lye.  Not 
>enough to make the water seriously caustic, mind you, but a small 
>amount.  Some susbsitute another alkali, as the idea of eating lye 
>bothers them.

 From what I've read, commercial pretzels are sprayed with lye 
solution before baking; the lye denatures the starch at the surface 
to form the hard, glossy finish prized in such pretzels.  And the 
baking process allegedly neutralizes the toxicity of the lye.  I 
gather the "traditional" homemade equivalent is boiling in lye 
solution.

I've tried it myself twice, with poor results (which might have been 
because I was using my low-carb bread recipe rather than making a 
batch of dough just for pretzel purposes).  On one occasion at home I 
boiled the pretzels for a minute or two in a fairly strong baking 
soda solution, and they turned out inedibly bitter.  At Pennsic last 
I boiled the pretzels for a minute or two in a weak solution of 
Mistress Thora's fireplace ash (which she has used as a source of lye 
in the past for dyeing purposes); they weren't inedibly bitter, but 
decidedly uninteresting.  I'll have to try again some time with 
ordinary bread dough.
-- 
                                     John Elys
          (the artist formerly known as mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib)
                                 mka Stephen Bloch
                                 sbloch at adelphi.edu