Is That A Wood Fired Soft Pretzel?

I woke up to a dreary cold day with a north wind (according to the weather man)! This is not what I wanted in mid June with my pool and flowers looking so good. I am off from work and can't enjoy my vacation spot in my backyard! But with a little thought I decided this is perfect weather for soft pretzels in the brick oven! I usually wait until fall or late summer when the evening are a little cool for pretzel baking.
I searched for my recipe and grabbed my recipe book and enjoyed the day anyway.
I use a recipe I found on line for the dough and learned some good tricks from my book. The book is called The Pretzel Cookbook by Priscilla Warren. I like all the different types of pretzels and many different recipes in the book. I have made the dough a few times from the book and it is a nice dough and very easy. Today I made a copycat recipe from the internet that is similar to Auntie Annie's from the mall.    
 Karl starts a nice hot fire and lets it burn down to hot coals. He pushes the coals to the back and lets the oven cool down a bit. The temperature is about is about 400 degrees when we bake the pretzels. I have not mastered pretty pretzels! Karl has not mastered the best way of baking! We some times bake them right on the brick, this works well but they do fall apart and stick. We some times bake them on a baking sheet first and then transfer to the brick, they still stick and fall apart a little! No one seems to care how they look because they taste really really good...  

Rolling the dough is fun and frustrating. The dough wants to shrink and we are still not good at a true pretzel shape. The rolled pretzel also must be dipped in baking soda and hot water and if it looked pretty before this dipping it does not look pretty after! To transfer them from the baking sheet to the oven is another step that causes them to look even less like a pretzel. After they bake and puff up they do look look funny but the smell of fresh hot pretzels baking in your own backyard is unbelievable!  I like them best when they are dipped in melted sweat cream butter and covered in cinnamon and sugar after baking. I also dip the pretzels in butter and sprinkle with kosher salt for a traditional pretzel. I wish I knew someone who worked at a pretzel place and could come and teach me. Anyone out there willing to give me a few tips?
So here is my recipe and some pictures. I hope you go ahead and try this yourself. If they look better then mine let me know! I hope they taste as yummy as mine and you have as much fun as we do. You will need a Round Boy Oven to make them just like mine and remember I know where you can get one! If you are interested in our ovens feel free to leave a comment and I will help you with your questions and how to purchase one.

Soft Pretzel Recipe
ingredients:
1 1/2 cup warm water
1 1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup bread flour
3 cups regular flour
2 cups Warm water
2 tablespoons baking soda
to taste coarse salt
4 tablespoons butter (melted)

 

Directions:

Sprinkle yeast on lukewarm water in mixing bowl; stir to dissolve. Add sugar, salt and stir to dissolve; add flour and knead dough until smooth and elastic. Let rise at least 1/2 hour.

While dough is rising, prepare a baking soda water bath with 2 cups warm water and 2 Tbsp baking soda. Be certain to stir often. After dough has risen, pinch off bits of dough and roll into a long rope* (about 1/2 inch or less thick) and shape. Dip pretzel in soda solution and place on greased baking sheet. Allow pretzels to rise again. Bake in 450 oven for about 10 minutes or until golden. Brush with melted butter and enjoy!

Toppings: after you brush with butter try sprinkling with coarse salt. or for Auntie Anne's famous Cinnamon Sugar, try melting a stick of butter in a shallow bowl (big enough to fit the entire pretzel) and in another shallow bowl make a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. Dip the pretzel into the butter, coating both sides generously. Then dip again into the cinnamon mixture. Enjoy!

* The longer and thinner you can make the dough rope, the more like Auntie Annie's they will be.

*Sweet butter, not regular butter, is one of her secrets!

This recipe from CDKitchen for Aunt Annie's Soft Pretzels serves/makes 12

 

                          
  This is the finished pretzels dipped in butter and sugar and cinnamon also traditional with butter and kosher salt. They lasted about 15 minutes! Karl, Amanda and I enjoyed them and it made the cool weather in June and a day off from work a perfect day....

Wood fired ribs and a new chef!

Amanda took over our wood fired oven and she created amazing ribs with diced potatoes in sweet cream butter! Watching her keep the fire going and handle the ribs being moved around in the oven with Karl's welding gloves was priceless! She even had the black marks on both shoulders that Karl seems to have every time he makes pizza. The best part was I spent the day relaxing by the pool and there was no clean up involved. No, I am sorry the best part was the ribs! The recipe for the ribs came from K.C.'s friend Frank. He made the ribs on his grill for Amanda and K.C. at his home in Philadelphia after a concert they attended. I am really impressed with his cooking and I am sure it came from his Mom and her great cooking skills! The recipe for the potatoes is from my BFF Cathy. She makes the same potatoes on the grill and adds broccoli and mushrooms with clams. We have it every year at her lake house for the 4th of July. She will be so happy that I spelled her name with a "C" instead of a "K" like I always do!
I love how a recipe and who shared it with you and where you first enjoyed it brings great memories back of the fun time with friends and family. I keep telling "M'', Amanda's friend spending time with us this summer, how she will always remember us when she eats pizza as the crazy food obsessed family with a brick oven in their backyard! I hope you try our recipes in your brick oven and make some wonderful memories with good friends and family! I think the entertaining part of having a wood fired oven is truly the best part. We have had more fun and more people in our yard with the oven then we ever had before.
I would love for you to leave some comments for me if you have a brick oven and if you don't have a brick oven I know where you could get one!

Amanda's Oven Technique

To get the oven to temperature Karl and Amanda started a fire and brought the oven to white hot ( The oven turns completely white. This is how you tell the oven is ready for pizza). They let the fire burn down to hot coals with the flame reaching about a 1/4 of the way up the oven side and a temperature of 300 for the 7 hours the ribs cooked. Amanda moved the rib packets around about every 1/2 hour and the potato packets she kept away from the fire. The fire was kept to the side and she added wood and natural charcoal as needed to maintain the 300 temperature. She baked everything for about 7 hours while we relaxed by the pool.

Potatoes and Sweet Cream Butter by Cathy

Dice Potatoes ( 1 or 2 per person)
Slice sweet onion ( 1 for 2 or 3 persons)
dot with sweet cream unsalted butter (about 2 Tbs per packet)
salt and pepper to taste and wrap in individual foil
Cathy adds broccoli,mushroom and clams and cooks on her grill
we placed in the oven and let them roast all day

Ribs by Frank

(this is for 2 racks of ribs)

The Night Before

Rub Concoction

About a cup of brown sugar

Around 1/4 cup of salt

About 2 tablespoons of garlic powder

A Tablespoon of black pepper

2 tablespoons of "Mrs Dash" seasoning

1 tsp - 1 tbs of cayenne pepper to taste

- Combine all ingredients, set aside

-Place ribs in tinfoil boats, so that you can place the ribs in, and have the bottom be waterproof and top be able to crimp around them

-Rub ribs thoroughly with concoction and seal them into the tin foil boats, leaving one end completely crimped, and the other able to be opened to pour "sauce" in.

-Double or triple layer foil to prevent leakage.

Day of Baking

"Sauce"

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup apple juice

1 package onion soup mix

- Mix "sauce" together and distribute between the foil boats (little more for the bigger, less for the smaller obviously)

- Crimp ends together

Calzone and a great "almost"summer night

                                                                                                                                                                                 










Calzone "Wood Fired" of course! Mmmm...

Finally some summer weather! Friday night and a new wood fired recipe book from K.C. for my birthday last month will make a great night along with the weather. The book is by Andrea Mugnaini and is called The Art Of Wood Fired Cooking. Tonight we are using her dough recipe and a recipe for sausage vegetable calzone. The book gives some good tips on how to manage your fire when making different foods. There are different methods for grilling, baking bread or baking pizza. For the calzone we placed the fire to one side and put the calzone opposite to the fire and towards the front of the oven. We kept the temperature high at around 700*F. As the floor gets hotter the flames get larger. The dome should be void of any black spots and the flame should be rolling to mid point of the dome. This is explained in more detail in the book and you are given details for cooking all the recipes in the book. This worked very well for us and the calzone was done in about five minutes! Cooking with wood is so fast!
The dough recipe was a little different from doughs I have made. It uses active dry yeast you mixed with warm water (110* to 115*F) for 5 minutes to activate. I usually use instant or bread machine yeast. The recipe can be altered to make in 3 hours,24hours or 48 hours. I used 24 hour dough as I like the flavor of cold fermentation dough. It was more bread like then the thin crust we are used to and had a great flavor. I wish I could find a store that sells 00 flour as the recipe calls for it has a 10.5 percent protein and is ground very fine. I used bread flour and it was good.
The sausage and vegetable calzone was easier then making pizza and I liked that everything was prepared on Thursday to bake on Friday night after work!
I will share the vegetable sausage calzone recipe with you and you can try it with your own dough.

Sausage and Vegetable Calzone from The Art Of Wood Fired Cooking

1/4 c chopped roasted sweet red bell pepper
1/4 c sauteed spinach, drained well
1/4 pound spicy Italian sausage sauteed and cooled to room temperature
1/3 c fresh ricotta
1/2 c diced fresh mozzarella
1/4 c shredded fontina
1 T grated pecorino
1 teas fresh oregano leaves
1 8 to 10 oz. pizza dough

Combine all ingredients except dough in a bowl and mix well. Mound mixture onto one half of stretched dough. Fold other half over and pinch to seal. Place in oven towards the front and bake about 5 min until puffed and stiffened. Pull forward and pierce with a sharp knife to release steam and brush with olive oil. Return to oven and bake 2 to 3 minutes more. Enjoy!


There are so many tips in this book. I learned why it is best to hand press the dough and not use a rolling pin. The rolling pin presses out the air and makes the crust dense. Hand rolled dough is light and tender and also cooks faster. The recipes are for everything from seafood to peach crisp. I can't wait to make a Thanksgiving turkey and I am going to follow the suggestion to try it out this summer before the holiday! Karl liked the chapter on making the right fire for the food you are making. I will share more as I make the recipes.
If you have a Round Boy Oven I suggest you try this book and learn more delicious ways to enjoy cooking with fire!