A fun twist to cooking together

Soft pretzels can be made from premade or homemade dough

STORY BY BONNIE AMBROSI PHOTOS BY EMMA AMBROSI

This is how our pretzel adventure came about. For some time, I had been bringing home fresh pizza dough from Whole Foods Co-op, where I am a cook. (In case you’re wondering, I like Daiya nondairy pepperjack shreds on my pizza.) In fact, I was bringing home the dough so often that we were all getting tired of pizza.

Then the proverbial light bulb went on over my head: We could make this dough into pretzels! I remembered making soft pretzels with the children at Quaker Meeting years ago — a happy activity worth revisiting.

Dough is fun to work with. Little hands can form it into simple shapes: lumps, balls, snakes. Older kids can make longer snakes and twist them into circles or even the classic pretzel form, as illustrated here by my teenage daughter Emma.

Boiling the pretzels briefly is a job for teens or adults, but little ones will enjoy watching the water foam up when you stir in the baking soda. This soda-water bath gives the pretzels their shiny-chewy exterior.

If you buy premade pizza dough, this is a very quick and easy project, but making your own dough is fun, too. Here’s my version of a recipe from “Italian Pizza and Hearth Breads” by Elizabeth Romer, copyright 1987 — a dear little cookbook that has traveled with my husband and me from one address to another for three decades.

Pizza Dough

• 1 cup very warm water

• ½ teaspoon sugar

• ¾ teaspoon active dry yeast (about ½ a packet)

• 3 cups unbleached flour

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions:

Pour the warm water into a glass measuring cup or a small bowl and whisk in the sugar and yeast. Set aside in a warm place for about ten minutes until the mixture becomes foamy. (If it doesn’t foam, your yeast died. Try again with slightly cooler water or fresh yeast.)

Mix the flour and salt in a large bowl. Make a well in the center and pour in the foamy yeast-water along with the olive oil. Mix with a wooden spoon until the dough begins to come together, then turn it out onto a floured board and knead it with your hands for a few minutes until it feels bouncy.

Let the dough rest for a few minutes while you prepare the oven, baking sheets and water bath.

From this point on, instructions are the same whether you’re using homemade or store-bought dough:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper and oil lightly with spray oil, or just oil the baking sheets directly.

Fill a wok, soup kettle, or other wide, deep vessel with water 4-5 inches deep and bring to a simmer. Add 3 tablespoons of baking soda.

Pull off pieces of dough and form them into whatever shapes you and your kids desire. Keep in mind that the dough will expand as it cooks. Flour your hands to keep the dough from sticking.

Bring the soda-water to a low boil. Gently place two or three pretzels at a time into the soda-water and let them cook for about 30 seconds, then lift them out with a slotted spoon, place them on the oiled baking sheet, and sprinkle with coarse salt.

Bake the pretzels for 10 to 15 minutes until they are golden brown on top and bottom. The bigger the pretzel, the longer it will take to bake.

We like our soft pretzels just plain, warm from the oven, but you can also dip them into any tomato sauce that you and your kids like.

A note about whole wheat pretzels

In previous columns, I have expressed my undying love for whole grain flour. In the case of these pretzels, however, I am making an exception. I baked a trial batch of whole wheat pretzels, just to see how that would work. They were so dense and heavy, they practically had their own gravitational field. If you like that sort of thing, go for it! Otherwise, I advise using organic unbleached bread flour.