Pretzelmania

It took all of Friday, but I recovered from my traumatic day on Thursday. My plow guy came Thursday night at 10, just in time for me to get my car off the street before the town plow entombed me. On Friday I learned that Abby's car had been towed, bailed it out and arranged for it to be repaired, discovered that, in fact, it was right where Abby left it, got it towed for real, fixed (new alternator and battery) and returned. I thanked the people at Lower Falls Wine Co. for saving my family and took Roxanne to the doctor with a nasty rash (antibiotic allergy). A busy day, and I missed work to accomplish it all.

Today, it #$@&^ing snowed again. So we stayed home this time and I needed a project. I decided to bake pretzels from scratch based on a recipe in the October 2007 issue of Beer Advocate magazine. I used Blue Point Brewing's "Hoptical Illusion" as the beer in the recipe. It looked like it wasn't going to work - the dough didn't rise very much - but I stuck with it, got some help rolling and knotting the pretzels from Abby, parboiled the pretzels in water with baking soda in it and baked them. To my surprise, they were huge, puffy and delicious. Both Stella and Roxanne (still covered in a rash, thank you very much) loved them. Baking is a mystery to me, I have to tell you, but these results were worth the angst:

If you have a beer drinker in your circle of gift recipients this holiday season, I recommend a subscription to Beer Advocate. Reviews, interviews, recipes, snark - all good things and enough pictures of tasty beer to make you thirsty.

Comments

[Anali]

Those pretzels are beautiful!! I think you cracked the baking mystery. : )

[E]

Beer makes everything better. Pretzels with beer? Even better. Glad everyone is safe.