The Aerie
Ever since returning from Germany, over a year ago now, I have yearned for a decent Bavarian pretzel. I didn't realize until we arrived in Germany that one of the things I had been missing all my life was a decent pretzel. Nobody said to me when I was eight years old, "Well you'll move away from New York City, and you'll never have a decent pretzel again until you're REALLY REALLY OLD."
Of course, nobody warned me about the paucity of proper pizza, the blockade on better bagels, or the complete deficiency of decent delis, either. If they had, I might still be there!
While we were in Germany I reveled in rediscovered pretzels, the brezn whose posterity had appeared on the streets of New York. Why, when I was at the crowded computer gaming show, with 180,000 other people, I ordered a pretzel from a rolling cart in an aisle. The pretzel came out of an oven on the cart. While I was waiting for my fresh, hot pretzel a delivery boy ran up with dozens of doughy pretzels on a tray. They thought so highly of the pretzel in Germany that they delivered the pretzels to the cart as dough, and baked them in the cart!
Having been unable to find a decent pretzel since that time, I determined to try making my own this summer. And just as with blogging and writing and working on my college homework, I procrastinated and made excuses and didn't get it done. But now that I'm going to be gone for a couple of weeks, and summer feels like it has finally breathed its last, then finally, at the last minute, I decided to make some pretzels...
The first thing that happened when I broke out the flour and yeast is that my spouse had a yeast attack. Not a yeast infection, but a yeast attack. While she is not a control freak, my spouse has her issues, and one of them is regards relying upon microscopic creatures for assistance in baking. She hates it. So for her, "proofing" the yeast - demonstrating to herself that it is alive and ready to do its job - is always an anxiety-producing beginning to any project.
So when I opened the jar of yeast my spouse bounded into action. Knocking me aside, she quickly threw together the water and sugar, measuring the water temperature first with a candy thermometer and then a meat thermometer in order to ensure the little yeast-creatures did not get scalded. Assured that the water was 105 degrees Fahrenheit - no more, no less - she added the yeast.
My first attempt at proofing - a large measuring cup full of the water and sugar called for in the recipe, sat there looking brownly stupid. The yeast particles that I had added floated on top like surly teenagers loitering around a big wet shopping mall. Meanwhile my wife's industrious cup of water boiled over with active yeast foam like a shaken can of beer.
So I threw my water out, mixed up a new batch, added it to the flour, and then added my wife's yeast. Who am I to argue with perfection?
The next step was figuring out how to roll the dough. That took some work, at least, getting it to stop sticking to everything took some work. Eventually I had a vaguely knot-shaped lump of dough which the instructions said I should next boil in a bath of baking soda and water. I did this, and my knot immediately untied itself and turned into a lump of sludge. This was not an auspicious beginning, but I flipped the sludgeblob onto the salting tray and applied the salt.
My first pretzel, therefore, looked less like a pretzel and more like a liposuctioned blob of fat.
Undaunted I and my youngest son, who had volunteered to help, returned to the task at hand. A little while later our blobs were beginning to hold their quasi-pretzel shape even after boiling, and with some trepidation we threw the first batch into the oven.
While the first batch baked, we assembled the second, finishing about the time that the first batch was done. Unfortunately the first batch came out a bit doughy and raw, although they were nicely browned. This suggested to me that the outsides were cooking faster than the insides, and we turned the oven down from the recommended 475 degrees to 425 to allow the insides more time to cook up before the outsides browned.
By this time we had a system pretty much worked out for rolling, boiling, salting and baking the pretzels, and the process went pretty quickly. A double-recipe - nine cups of flour - yielded about two-and-a-half dozen pretzels in four batches. Despite lowering the baking temperature the dough remained gummy, and the pretzels chewy. Also when they cooled the pretzels shrank a bit, giving them the tan, leathery look of a chain-smoking Floridian grandma.
A baker to whom I spoke later in the day suggested that the pretzels were too damp coming out of their bath - when I asked how you keep something from being wet when it just came out of a bath she looked at me like I was stupid and said "You dry it off with a towel." Which is pretty obvious in retrospect. Another person suggested boiling them for a longer period - I was immersing them completely for ten seconds, she said to boil them for 20.
If LOOKS counted for anything these first-attempt brezn would have to be judged a success. And certainly eating them is no worse than eating a Bruegger's salt bagel. But we are a long, long way from the bliss of an authentic Bavarian brezen, so I'll just have to give it another try in a few weeks...
Oy. Even my fingers are tired. I'm typing this, my digits feel like lead.
With the help of my bicycling-buddy R, I've been at least getting some regular exercise in this summer. If I haven't been blogging and I haven't been working, at least I've been pedaling my bike about four one-hour sessions a week.
Yesterday my wife and I went to the State Fair... BY OURSELVES. The last time we went to the State Fair by ourselves, our twins were in the Neonatal Intesive Care Unit incubators. She had missed the entire summer on hospitalized bed-rest, started on June 21st, gave birth on August 3rd. She'd missed her sister's wedding and one of the hottest summers ever. So when the State Fair rolled around I assured her that the babies were in the best possible care and that they would not mind us spending a day at the Fair.
As for me, I'd been having a rough one. We had moved into our house on June 1st of that year (yeah, I've lived in this house 16 years, far longer than any other place I ever lived) and on June 21st my wife went into the hospital. So I was living out of unpacked moving boxes, driving (without air conditioning through blazing, blazing heat) up to Robbinsdale and back on a daily basis, and working on my feet at the U of M helpline. Additionally this was immediately after Internet Gopher had come out, so on top of my other responsibilities I had Gopher code to write on a daily basis.
Somewhere in the middle of all that I got horribly sick and spent a day on my mother-in-law's basement couch recovering from what was undoubtedly exhaustion.
So I was up for a trip to the Fair myself by that time.
Sixteen years later we had a wonderful time wandering the Fair by ourselves. No photos, sorry - you want to see any photos of the MN State Fair you can look here, here, here or here. It looked pretty much like that...
So we spent a lot of time at the Fair, about 8 hours, and left about 3:30 when the crowds started getting stupidly huge. We had a wonderful time looking at all the exhibits that would just BORE our kids to tears. It was also delightful being able to buy a snack for under $50. One fun thing was when we went to the art building, there was a portrait of our friend A and her father. Also while in the art building I ran into a woman painting a portrait who told me about a great little art school in Minneapolis, so I've got to get my daughter over there to see it next week.
After the fair I was bushed, so naturally my friend R phoned up and wanted to bike. I thought it would be a short ride, but we got into such an interesting conversation that I ended up doing the whole route and got home ninety minutes later. Upon getting home I had to grill dinner.
So this morning I get up, already tired, and remember that I'm due to take my son on a hike - well, I'm not going to pass THAT up, so off we go, hiking along the Mississippi bluffs. Then home, to take a shower, after which I passed out on the living room couch. I wake up to find my wife asking me to mow the lawn, borrowing for a change the neighbor's power mower. So we move all the lawn furniture, mow the front and back lawn, put the lawn furniture back... Then I realize that our driveway needs mowing. Yes, over the years the driveway has degenerated into a crumbled pile of weed-infested asphalt.
So I take the lawnmower to the driveway, along with some shears to clip down the volunteer trees, and end by yanking the wild grapevine out of the neighbor's tree for the second year in a row.
Then the wheel fell off their lawnmower. Oy. So I offered to fix it (it just needs a cotter pin), and they said they'd get back to me if they don't have one.
A second shower later, and dinner... and that's more exercise in a bit more than 24 hours than I've gotten all summer!
Now it's time to go to a movie! Ah will this whirlwind lifestyle never end?