• I just want to say a few words about the ingredients necessary for making Pretzel Bread. I went to a great deal of trouble hunting down the malt powder and lye (sodium hydroxide). For malt powder , I scoured Canada and was unsuccessful in my search. I guess brands don’t think enough Canadians make bread. My solution was just to throw money at the problem and be patient while the ubiquitous-in-the-US malt powder arrived at my door.
• The lye was a different story. Never having considered using it as an ingredient, it took me a while to find a brand that I felt comfortable enough using. Even if I used the sodium hydroxide sold as drain cleaner (lye at its impure state), at a 4% solution, I doubt anything much would have happened to me; however, I have to want to eat the pretzels after I bake them. Rick being a chemist, found me a brand that was pure enough for my purposes. It wasn’t until after the pretzels were baked and tasted that he told me a story about a highly concentrated sodium hydroxide solution that blew a tanker off its bolts. He thought that was funny.

MIX THE PRETZEL DOUGH

• Initially, the dough didn’t form a ball, so I was forced to add 1 tsp of water. After that, it comes together as described.

• I let it rest for the prescribed hour, and to my surprise, it didn’t rise hardly at all. Usually, the dough will puff some and form air pockets, but not for this dough. It was very stiff, smooth and pliable.

• I cut the pieces willy-nilly without weighing them, and in retrospect, I should have been more precise because the baking times for the smaller pretzels were different.

• Still, shaping the pretzels took some time. I wanted them to look like footballs and not pretzel nuggets. And I was impressed with how quickly the dough dried out even in the earliest stages of handling. It kept forming a dry crust after just a few minutes.

• I wondered why refrigerating them uncovered for one hour was important and I worried that leaving them in the fridge for three hours (that’s what I did) would be the end of them.

MAKING THE LYE SOLUTION

• I felt so concerned about the lye, that I took every precaution. Rick has a gas mask with vapour cartridges downstairs, and I considered wearing it, but then I thought better. I wouldn’t allow making pretzels to become a drama. The lye dissolved nicely and it didn’t splash around. I survived.

SLASH AND GLAZE THE DOUGH

• The moment of truth. I suited up with those thick and cumbersome red rubber gloves and got to it. I dipped the first pretzel in the solution and it became soft and very slippery.

• Of course the breads got slippery. Lye is one of the primary ingredients in making soap. I dipped them briefly in the solution and set them on the tray. I’ve since read Thomas Keller pretzel recipe in which he says to leave the pretzel in the solution for at least 40 seconds. I wonder how more lye glaze would change the final pretzel?

BAKE THE PRETZEL BREADS

• They baked easily and quickly, and they puffed substantially while in the oven. What a transformation. They looked like real pretzels and smelled like real pretzels, but did they taste like a real pretzel? YES!

• I also noted that there were areas that I didn’t glaze well with the solution and those areas didn’t brown at all. They stayed white as a lily, as were the inside of the slashes. Fascinating. In conclusion, I had great fun with this recipe.