Oktoberfest, that glorious time of year where
thousands of tourists descend upon Munich Germany and make
drunken fools of themselves while wearing ill-fitted lederhosen,
but not this year.. Yes, for only the 25th time in 210 years
Oktoberfest ist abgesagt, cancelled. But I had no plan to go to
Munich anyway so it doesn't really put much of a damper
on my plans. Instead i'm going to be celebrating Oktoberfest here at home
by making one of the festival's star snacks, the pretzel.
This time on Tasting History.
The first Oktoberfest celebration was held in 1810
to honor the marriage of Bavarian crown Prince Ludwig
to the Saxon Hildberghausen Princess Theresa.
That year the main event was a horse race which became the reason for the
yearly celebration, but as time went on the focus shifted
more toward food and beer so much so that in 1896 what had been
little scattered beer stalls were replaced by massive beer halls. The
beer then and still today has to be brewed in
Munich and has to live up to the Reinheitsgebot or German beer
Purity Law of 1516. Now I don't know if mine lives up to the
Reinheitsgebot but um it's the Oktoberfest Märzen, Paulaner,
yes! Yes, standards that strictly adhere to
the Reinheitsgebot using only four ingredients water, hops, yeast, and malt
for nearly 400 years. How's about that? So you know I am Reinheitsgebot
compliant even here in California but regardless if your
beer is Reinheitsgebot compliant or not nothing will accompany it better than a
pretzel, and that's what we're making today.
Now today's recipe comes from the 1581 Ein New Kochbuch, or A New Cookbook by Marx
Rumpolt. Kind of a misleading name now 440 years
later but I guess it was new when it came out.
Anyway precedella: take fair flour, egg yolk, and a little
wine, sugar and anise and make a dough with it.
With clean hands roll it nicely long and rounded
and make little pretzels. Place in a warm oven and bake, not burning it but until
they are well dried so they are crisp and good.
You may or may not use cinnamon and it is called
precedella. Now this is going to be very different from the traditional Bavarian
pretzel that we're used to that would be served
at Oktoberfest today. First of all it's not going to be
soft and springy because it's not leavened it's going to be
probably more like a cookie or a biscuit and crumbly. In fact
the recipe even said that it should be crisp after baking.
Also it has some really interesting ingredients like
anise and cinnamon, if you want, and wine. I mean that's just weird.
Clearly I did not think this through because I just opened this beer and now
i'm about to open a bottle of wine as well,
and i'm going to have both to contend with, but in the words of Heinrich Heine
"I shan't complain". Now on with the recipe! What you'll need is
two and a half cups or 300 grams of flour, four to five
large egg yolks, one third cup or 80 milliliters of wine.
Now the recipe doesn't specify what kind of wine. I would probably steer away from
a red wine, i'd go with a white. I went with a
riesling that's actually it's not too too sweet but it is sweeter
than most of your white wines, so you know because it's supposed to be
a sweet dish, but go with whatever you want.
Three quarters cup or 150 grams of sugar, a half teaspoon ground aniseed,
a half teaspoon ground cinnamon. (Now that's optional
according to the recipe). And a half teaspoon of salt.
Now some of you are probably saying "But Max where is the lye?"
and tis no lie there is no lye in this pretzel.
Now the pretzels that we think of today and the ones that would actually be
served at Oktoberfest are called laugenbrezel, or lye pretzels, and
that's because they're dipped in a diluted but still caustic lye
solution before being baked, and that's what gives it the wonderful
dark color and that sheen on the outside as well as contributes to the taste,
but for all that we know they haven't changed
in hundreds of years. It's a very simple recipe
and they they really haven't changed so seeing as this is all about making
historic foods and tasting something a little different I figured if you want
to see what a laugenbrezel tasted like 200 years ago
just go get one today, so i'm going with a recipe from Mainz
Germany just up the road, like a hundred miles I think for the
precedella or the sweeter pretzels. So the first thing
to do is preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit, or 180 degrees
celsius, then add your flour to a medium bowl and
whisk in the aniseed, cinnamon, and salt then
in a separate bowl beat the eggs and sugar until they're as pale as i am
in the middle of winter. Then add in the wine and mix
until incorporated. Finally a third at a time
add in the dry ingredients and mix in gently just until there are no streaks
remaining. At this point the dough should be fairly
workable. Now if it's too sticky to work with just add a little bit more
flour, one tablespoon at a time, until it becomes a consistency that you
think you're going to be able to roll into pretzels. Then with clean hands per
the recipe's instructions take a piece of dough and roll it out
until it's a nice long rope. Now the recipe is not specific in how
thin to roll the dough but I can tell you right now because we
didn't work any gluten there's not going to be a lot of stretch to this dough
so it will break if you get it too thin so just
kind of play with it, but not too thin. Once the dough is rolled out though it's
time to shape your pretzels. Again the recipe is not specific in how
big the pretzels are going to be. It says little pretzels but is it that big, who
knows! You know a laugenbrezel can be like this big so
anything is smaller than that, but I ended up making about
six or seven. I think I made like six decent sized pretzels with this
simply because any thinner and my dough broke.
So take the rope of dough and form a u-shape then cross
one end over the other and give it one more little twist
then make sure the main part of the pretzel is nice and round,
then fold the twisted ends over and press the tips down
very gently. Then place it onto a lined baking sheet
and repeat. Now these pretzels are going to turn out with a
dull finish, and that's okay but if you want to add an egg wash using egg yolk
at this point go right ahead. It'll give them a little
bit of a sheen, it just looks nicer and egg is already
in the recipe so it's not going to affect the flavor at all.
Now once the precedella are shaped pop them in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes
while we look at the history of pretzels.
So the story goes that in the year 610 an Italian monk was teaching little
children how to say their prayers for lent and
when they would do well he would give them a little treat. It was
a piece of bread that he would roll, and twist into the shape it was supposed
to be the shape of the children's arms folded over
as if they were praying, and he called them little rewards,
or pratiola. Wonderful story, so sweet, so nice so probably not true.
First of all, while not impossible the very specific date of 610 AD
makes me a little dubious of this story because
in the 7th century monks were writing down you know weddings of royalty, or the
death of a king or chronicling a battle but they weren't writing down the the
creation of a bread product very often. So that very specific date makes me
a little dubious. Also there are places in Southern France that
claim the exact same story, or something very similar and in Germany
they claimed they made them, and named them bracellus which means
bracelet in Latin, so yeah. And more recently historians
believed that the twisted bread was actually probably around as far back as
when the Celts were still in central Europe, and then
the Catholic church in the Middle ages just
took them, and gave them a nice little backstory. The medieval Catholic church
taking pagan things, and converting them to fit into Christianity?
Doesn't seem like something they would have done, but I suppose it's possible,
but regardless of where pretzels got their start we do know that they were
quite popular in and around modern day Germany by the
12th century where in 1111 they began to appear on
the emblems of Baker's guilds. Then in 1185 we have the earliest
depiction of the knotted baked good in an Alsatian encyclopedia called the
Hortus Deliciarum or Garden of Delights. A document more notable for being the
first encyclopedia compiled by a woman, Herrad of Landsberg.
What's interesting to me is the rather anachronistic placement
of the pretzel in Herrad's work where it's sitting on queen Esther's dinner
table from the bible. And while this may be the
bread's first official link to religious symbolism,
it is just the beginning of pretzels getting all knotted up
with Christianity. See while there is no direct evidence for that lovely
monk-making pretzel story we do know that by the Middle ages
pretzels had become very popular as a lenten food or a
food served during lent because they were so simple.
It was just flour, salt, water and sometimes yeast and sometimes not.
It was a perfect dish for those 40 days of fasting
before Easter. Additionally the fact that its distinct shape left
three holes in one pretzel made for an easy way for the Medieval church
to describe that holy trinity which they were always having
trouble explaining to people. Most famously St Patrick likened it to the
three leaves on a single clover. Though I think that I prefer the pretzel
analogy, and it seems that the Catholic church was actually a really good
publicist for pretzels because other than giving them a really
cool origin story they also began splashing them all over
the pages of prayer books where Saint Bartholomew
was often depicted surrounded by a wreath of pretzels. Saint or no that
man loved his carbs. And it's probably those
religious tie-ins that helped pretzels make their way
into the holiday traditions of many German-speaking countries
at Christmas people would dangle them from their tenenbaum like tasteful
ornaments, and then at New Year's children would
hang them around their necks as a good luck charm,
something that's still practiced in parts of Germany today. And by Easter
parents were hiding pretzels in and around the house kind of as a sort of
pre-Easter egg hunt tradition, and frankly I think I would prefer
pretzels to hard-boiled eggs, though I do wonder if they were trying to use the
same pretzels for all three holidays, because
I don't really think those Christmas pretzels are gonna make it to Easter. But
it wasn't all fun and games for pretzels. They
played their part in some very serious historical events as well.
Namely in 1529 when the city of Vienna, Austria was under siege by the Ottomans
led by Suleiman the Magnificent. So the story goes that
the Ottomans were digging tunnels to undermine the city's walls
but some monks who were in the basement of their monastery baking pretzels
heard the scratching of the pickaxes. They raised the alarm and alerted the
famous Imperial landsecuconnect who stoppedthe enemy before they could break
through, saving the city. And as a reward the
pretzel-baking monks were given an official coat of arms by the Habsburg
emperor Charles V. Wonderful story,
but also probably not true but I don't really mind that because
while it's probably not true it's surrounded by true events,
and that's one thing that I love about these little stories
in history. I go searching for pretzel history, and instead I spend four hours
learning about the Siege of Vienna which I didn't
know that much about, and I love that I can just kind of fall
down these little historical rabbit holes, and that is why
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the pretzel made its way to America. Now we don't
have an exact year for pretzel's debut in the New World but it was probably
around the year 1700 when an influx of German immigrants came
in to settle Pennsylvania. But pretzels basically stayed the same
until 1861 when they got a new twist. Julius Sturgis
in Lititz, Pennsylvania opened America's first commercial pretzel bakery.
Soon after he developed the American hard pretzel,
and they were great because they lasted a lot longer and he could ship
them further away. Now many people give him full credit for having the first
hard pretzel, but as we've seen in our recipe today that
is not quite so, because our pretzel should be nice and
crisp and about ready to take out of the oven.
So start checking your pretzels around 12 minutes but it might take a little
bit longer, you just want to have them kind of dried
out on top and browning just a little bit around the
edges. Then take them out and set them on a wire rack to cool.
And here we are our 16th century bretzel precedella. So yeah here it is, it's
lovely. Ii actually ended up doing the egg
wash on some and not on others. I definitely like the egg wash.
I also sprinkled a little extra cinnamon on top just
because it looked good, and why not? I'd say that's crispy, let's give it a
shot. They're also kind of crumbly though so...mhm, mhm, mhm...
These pretzels are making me thirsty. Seinfeld shout out for anyone who
watches Seinfeld. All right, so full transparency here i'm
not really a fan. Namely because they have aniseed in
them. I don't like aniseed so why would I
think I would be a fan, I need a lot more sugar. I just don't
like that that flavor all that much, and it's not like overwhelmingly
anise flavored. They're, just there's that flavor and
I just don't really, really care for that. The texture is interesting, it's almost
like, almost like shortbread except a little
softer. Like they they don't crumble quite as
much as shortbread, but the texture actually I don't mind
though they did make me thirsty, legitimately. I do think that
if I was going to make these I would just leave out the aniseed and
put maybe some extra sugar, and maybe ginger in them, and then they would be
delicious. So you know I think that you can play
around, and you know do some different flavors but
other than the shape of a pretzel there's nothing about this
that screams pretzel in flavor, but if you think about like those
dutch butter cookies they're in pretzel shape there's nothing about that
that says pretzel other than shape either so really
it's just the shape, and that's okay because it was fun to to make it. I
learned how to do that. I'd never done it before and it wasn't
as hard as i thought it would be. Anyway regardless of what you're doing
for Oktoberfest I hope that you have a beer, have a pretzel, or just enjoy
Oktoberfest however you like and I will see you next time
on Tasting History.