I give myself the chance to bake something last week end: my sourdough Brienne was alone in the fridge for too long.
I was craving not pizza or bread but something easy and that could last few days: I was procastinating brezel for a long time, I found a recipe with sourdough so I just needed a helpful hand.
Luckly Lorenzo was home and willing to help.
Brezels ( or prezels, it depends on the region) are a kind of bread someone leads back to monks in France and North of Italy whom, with dough leftovers, made small treats the shape of hands joined to pray for children who learn by heart part of the Bible or prayers.
The shiny dark colour of brezel is their distinctive trait and it’s reached with a boiling process called Laugengebäck in German.
The boiling happens in a solution of water and lye, in countries where brezels are common you can buy lye cubes at chemist’s but here they aren’t plus lye is quite dangerous especially if you have an helping child around so in this recipe you will find instructions to boil brezels into a solution of water, baking soda and cooking salt.
The result will be not as shiny and dark as with lye but the taste is great.
After all this I have to say one more thing about brezel: I had to do them.
I really had to do them because when I was in Munich in October with my sister and my best friend I wandered about for three days looking for a cloth or tea towel or napking with blue and white squares, emblem of Bavaria for my photo sets and they wandered about with me.
I only find the right napking ( not too shiny, not with too big squares…) the last day, we really looked for it everywhere and now I really had to make a Bavaria dish and to take pictures with that napkin!
Isn’t it great? Say yes please!
Print Recipe
Brezels with sourdough
Instructions
Melt sourdough in water with malt or honey.
Add oil (or butter) then flour and salt.
Knead untill you have a smooth loaf, cover and let it rise untill it double.
Put a pan with water on fire, add salt and baking soda.
Make pieces of about 4.5 oz of dough, make long rolls and cross them into brezel's shape.
When water boils put brezels, one at time, into the pan for 40 seconds/ 1 minute (the more the darker, with lye 30 seconds are enough but with baking soda you need more time to get a dark colour).
Put brezels on a baking tray, sprinkle them with cooking salt, make a cut in the curved part and bake for about 20 minutes at 390°F.
