I’ve been plagued by email problems the last two weeks. Yesterday I discovered several dozen emails that had collected over the last month, emails that I meant to read and respond to, but promptly lost instead. So, if you’ve sent in a question or comment and haven’t received a reply yet, please re-send. If you’ve […]
READ ONNew reader Deborah B. writes: I have now spent the last 40 minutes reading your blog — dang! You may have succeed in moving me off food porn to food erotica! Er, thanks Deborah! I think…
READ ONYes, lye. I understand why you might be worried about it. I confess that it’s worrisome having a dangerous caustic alkaline in the kitchen. However if you take the proper precautions, it’s no more dangerous to work with than a strong drain cleaner. The big problem is getting it. I confess I didn’t plan terribly […]
READ ONYou may have heard a rumor that you can only make truly authentic pretzels by using dangerous chemicals. That’s pretty much true. Lye has been an important part of the pretzel-making process for hundreds of years. However it’s not essential. You can make very serviceable pretzels without it. This recipe includes instructions for both. It’s […]
READ ONReader Michael F. submits this whopper by way of his Scottish grandmother: The Pretzel was Roman, but they invented it when they invaded the British Isles…they took English wheat to make their traveling biscuits but it was too soft to make the hard biscuits that they made with their own flour so the shape was […]
READ ONI love this one for the sheer inventiveness of it. It regards a young baker (variously referred to as an Italian, a German, Frenchman, even a colonial American) falsely accused of a crime (usually theft or fraud). The poor fellow is called before the local magistrate and sentenced to prison — with one caveat. If, […]
READ ONA radically different story about the origin of pretzels credits American Indians, who as the story goes had an ingenious method for preventing animals from making off with surplus wheat. They’d store it in rings of unleavened dough that they baked on hot rocks, then strung over the branches of trees a dozen or more […]
READ ONMy own thought on the origin of pretzels, and it’s not original, is that they were invented in Central Europe, somewhere around the region of what is now known as Germany. That said, this is absolutely not how it happened. Frankfurt, located in the German State of Hesse, has been an important commercial hub for […]
READ ONSpeaking of good conversation, there’s a fun one going on right now over on Rose Levy Beranbaum’s site about what went on here in this space last week. Rose put up all the content and invited her readership to comment — and many of them did. Read it and/or get in on it with both […]
READ ONThe emails just keep right on coming in regard to my It’s a guy thing post the other day. So many in fact that I’m going to have to give up sending personal replies to all of them. So for all you gender warriors out there who still may be working on your outlines, let […]
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