Gutte Pretzels

There was a great article in today's Dining section of the New York Times. It was about pretzels stores in New York. Most of Manhattan's salty treats are covered in salt with really little or no taste. This frustrates me because I love good old fashioned homemade pretzels. I know two place here in Jersey thatt make them. In New York it;s a desert. Luckily the writer Julia Moskin has found a great one in the East Village.

The store featured is Sigmund and it's owned not by a German but a Russian born pastry chef, Lina Kulchinsky. She makes the traditional mahogany ones that are first dipped in a lye water solution to make the salt stick. There is another variation by Sue Torres the pastry chef at Manhattan;s Rusty Knot that makes a pretzel covered hot dog. This is not new The Germans have been eating big pretzels and sausages for breakfast for years. They don't have pretzels with mustard like they have here.

There is even a pretzel recipe that looks good. It seems like a simple recipe that involves lard and yeast along with barley malt syrup.Think I'd like to make homemade ones however it probably would require a lot of practice. There's also the alchemy of ingredients that work , probably the yeast is the magic component in all if it.Even though I'm mostly German I have yet to make these. We have no family recipes for them and none were handed down.
Big pretzels are wonderful. Homemade ones even better if they're done right. I'm looking forward to trying the East Village ones. I bet they're gutte!