[Sca-cooks] Not bagels, pretzels

[Christiane]

Trying to determine if brazzatelle were shaped like bagels or pretzels may be a fruitless exercise if you're going on word origin. How is the word "braccia" pronounced and spelled in Ferrarese dialect anyway?

Plus, even if the word does come from the Old High German (I believe that it does), it doesn't mean the brazzatelle were made in the Germanic way... and unless we have portrait evidence from a period feast, I'd say make them in whatever shape you feel like having them that day. Rings or pretzel-shaped, baked a little harder or a little softer ... whatever the cook felt like doing that day or week. We've got Messisbugo's recipe, but the interpretation of form seems to have been something that was understood by the audience, and we'll never know for sure what that form was.

Gianotta