29. Twist Once, Then Fold Them Down

Vera: Nearly six hundred years ago, around the year 1440, a painter decorating a small prayer book for a noblewoman drew a saint inside a border of pretzels. They are still there on the page, golden and knotted, as if they had just come out of the oven.

Anton: So even then the pretzel was well known, and loved enough to decorate a holy book. Some say the knot was meant to look like arms folded across the chest in prayer. Nobody can prove it. I like the story anyway.

A Quarter to One, at the Stove

Vera: Nuri is sitting on the high stool by the spice rack, rolling a rope of dough as long as his own arm, and Petra, under the clock, is practising the knot with a shoelace first. She is very serious about it.

Anton: She is right to practise. Make a U on the table. Take the two ends and cross the arms. Twist once, then fold them down and press them onto the fat belly of the rope. Three holes. A pretzel.

Vera: And then the pot of water. That part I do not understand.

Anton: The bath. Before baking, each pretzel swims for half a minute in hot water with baking soda in it. The soda changes the skin, so in the oven it turns a deep, shining brown, like a chestnut fresh out of its shell, with a taste no other bread has.

Question: Why do bakeries make darker pretzels than we can at home?

Answer: Some bakeries use lye, a strong chemical that burns skin and eyes. It never belongs in a home kitchen, and this book never uses it. A baking-soda bath is gentle and safe, and our pretzels come out only a little lighter.

At the Work Table

For eight pretzels: 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 10 g sugar (2 teaspoons), 9 g fine salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 300 ml lukewarm water (1 1/4 cups), 30 g soft butter (2 tablespoons), coarse salt to sprinkle. The bath: 2 litres water (8 cups) and 60 g baking soda (1/4 cup). Oven: 220°C (425°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix and knead the dough for eight to ten minutes, until firm and smooth. Cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: cut eight pieces and roll each into a rope 60 cm (24 inches) long, thick in the middle and thin at the ends. If the dough shrinks back, rest it five minutes.

Anton: Three, for a child: shape the knots and set them on trays lined with oiled baking paper. Leave them uncovered for twenty minutes, so a light skin forms.

Anton: Four, for a grown-up only: bring the water to a simmer in a wide pan, handle turned in, and add the soda slowly, because it foams up. Children stay away from the stove.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: lower each pretzel in with a slotted spoon for thirty seconds, where it floats like a water lily, lift it out, drain it, and lay it back on the tray.

Anton: Six, for a child: sprinkle with coarse salt. Then a grown-up bakes them twelve to fifteen minutes, until deep brown, and takes them out in oven gloves.

The Spring Fair, Long Ago

Vera: When I was eight, my mother took me to a spring fair in a river town in the south, where the stalls stood under chestnut trees in flower. Lotte sold pretzels there, hung on a wooden pole as tall as she was, like apples on a branch.

Vera: She let me lift one off the pole myself. It was warm and salty and so big that I wore it on my wrist like a bracelet while I ate, and I came home with salt crystals on my sleeve and chestnut petals in my hair.

Anton: The best fairs leave something in your hair.

On the Garden Wall, Early Afternoon

Three quick questions. One: How many holes does a pretzel knot have? Two: How long does each pretzel stay in the bath? Three: Who handles the hot bath?

Answers. One: Three. Two: Thirty seconds. Three: A grown-up, always.

Vera: Petra's knot is perfect. Nuri's has four holes, and he says that makes it a better pretzel.

Anton: Nobody can argue with four holes. Give them each a tall glass of apple juice mixed half and half with fizzy water, cold and bright. Salt and apples have gone together for as long as there have been fairs.

Key Words

Soda bath: hot water with baking soda in it, used to dip pretzels before baking so their crust turns deep brown.

Lye: a strong chemical some bakeries use for dark pretzels; it burns skin and eyes, so this book uses a baking-soda bath instead.

30. A Bagel Is Boiled Before It Is Baked

Anton: A bagel is boiled before it is baked. That one step, a minute in a pot of hot water, gives it the shining crust and the dense, chewy bite that no other bread has.

Vera: So everything we learned with the pretzels comes back today, only in a ring.

Half Past Twelve, at the Stove Again

Vera: Oskar is standing on the bottom rung of the ladder-backed chair by the stove, which is not allowed, and Lina is at the floury end of the table, under the window box of herbs, trying to push her thumb through a ball of dough.

Anton: Oskar, down, please. Lina, push straight through the middle, then stretch the ring wide with two fingers, wider than you think. A small hole closes up in the bath, like a pond freezing over from the edges.

Vera: The dough feels stiffer than any we have made.

Anton: It is. Less water, so the bagel stays tight and firm. Knead it in turns, children and grown-ups, because it tires the arms. And into the bath goes a spoon of malt, a sweet brown syrup made from sprouted barley, or honey if you have none.

Vera: Where were they first made?

Anton: In the cold market towns of the east, long ago. They crossed the ocean later, in the bundles of families looking for a new home.

Question: Why does a bagel come out chewy and not soft and fluffy like a roll?

Answer: The firm dough is part of it. The hot bath is the rest: it sets the skin before the oven, so the bagel cannot puff up much, and the inside stays close and chewy. The malt gives the shine.

At the Work Table

For eight bagels: 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 15 g sugar (1 tablespoon), 10 g fine salt (1 3/4 teaspoons), 280 ml lukewarm water (1 cup plus 3 tablespoons). The bath: 2 litres water (8 cups) and 1 tablespoon malt syrup or honey. Sesame or poppy seeds to top, if you like. Oven: 220°C (425°F).

Vera: Seeds can make some people very ill. Anyone with an allergy checks every ingredient and bakes the bagels plain. Honey is not for babies under one.

Anton: One, for a child with a grown-up's help: mix and knead for ten minutes, until smooth and firm. Cover and let it rise for an hour.

Anton: Two, for a child: cut eight pieces of about 100 g, roll them into balls, poke a thumb through each and stretch a hole 4 cm (1 1/2 inches) wide. Rest them twenty minutes on lined trays.

Anton: Three, for a grown-up only: bring the bath to a gentle simmer, handle turned in, and poach two or three bagels at a time, thirty seconds to a minute on each side. Lift them out with a slotted spoon.

Anton: Four, for a child: while they are damp, press the tops into the seeds and set them back on the tray.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: bake eighteen to twenty-two minutes, until golden brown, and take them out in oven gloves. Cool on a rack.

A Basement Bakery Across the Ocean, at Midnight

Anton: I worked for a winter in a great city across the ocean, in a basement bakery under a street where the trains shook flour from the shelves every few minutes. Mendel ran it, a small man with a pencil behind each ear.

Anton: He boiled bagels from midnight until dawn in a copper kettle as big as a bathtub. At six o'clock the night workers queued on the steps, and he handed them out in paper bags and never once took money from the street sweepers.

Vera: Why not from the street sweepers?

Anton: He said they were the only other people awake to see the sun come up over that city, and that made them colleagues.

The Table Cleared, Noon Ending

Three quick questions. One: What happens to a bagel before it is baked? Two: Why stretch the hole so wide? Three: What goes into the bath to make bagels shine?

Answers. One: It is poached in hot water. Two: Because the hole shrinks in the bath. Three: Malt syrup or honey.

Vera: The noon breads are all baked now. Lina is sharing her bagel with Oskar, in exchange for his promise to keep off the chair.

Anton: A fair trade. The next part of the day is the afternoon, and it brings soft, sweet doughs rich with butter, eggs and spice, the breads that children wait for after school, like birds that know the hour the crumbs are thrown.

Key Words

Malt: a sweet brown syrup made from sprouted barley, stirred into a bagel bath for shine and colour.

Poach: to cook something gently in hot water that is just below boiling.