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Pretzels?

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Illustration showing what appears to be a pretzel, from a 12th century French manuscript Hortus Deliciarum:

Hortus_Deliciarum_37-2m.jpg

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Hortus_Deliciarum_37-2m.jpg
 
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Legend has it that the pretzel was invented by an Italian monk in the year 610 A.D. To reward young children for learning their prayers, he supposedly folded strips of bread dough to resemble the crossed arms of praying children. He called his creation pretiola, which meant “little rewards."
 
An uncle was a baker all his life. (died about 1990) He swore that The Philadelphia style soft pretzels, the good ones, were made with the same dough as for bagels. Pretzel dough was dipped in a lye solution for a few seconds before baking. Now a baking soda solution is used to get that brown skin on the pretzels. (I worked in a place that baked soft pretzels when in high school and we still used lye back then. Burned holes in my shoes and pants a few times when I got sloppy mixing the stuff up. )

There is also a difference in the dough used most places for the crunchy pretzels and the recipe used around here in PA. there is more butter used here and the taste of local pretzels is richer than what I have encountered down South. (I live about 20 miles from Hanover PA, the snack capitol of the world. About 25% of the adults work in snack food factories. Snyder's Frito-lay, Utz, Martins etc all have factories there.

Yet I think pretzels must have been pretty rare on the edges of the frontier. A settlement food for sure. Requires flour, which means a farm and a mill, yeast, time to raise and baking.
 
Actually, it would depend on the pretzel, nein?

I think the Italian forerunner, and the later pretzels, were the hard variety. So no yeast, and in fact perhaps no leaven at all. Which would explain why they were given to children as a "treat" since they may have been more of what we would call a cookie. In the New World the recipe for "Maryland beaten biscuits" would work, no leaven and only air whipped into the dough to lighten anything. I think baking soda was later added to hard pretzels to reduce the hardness. Otherwise, more like ship's biscuit...

So that question would be when did the salt on the outside arrive, and did it replace sugar crystals on the original Italian cookie (assuming it was an Italian cookie and had crystal sugar on the outside :shocked2: )

So then you have the "soft" pretzels which is a yeast bread, and when did they appear?

Yes they are very similar to bagels. Are they related? Did the bagel stem from the pretzel or other way round, OR are they simply a very similar technique and recipe independent of each other?

Soft Pretzels at first were dipped in lye but now Soda Ash or Baking Soda in solution are used. Both soft pretzels and bagels are often simmered in water for a short period of time, with the soft pretzel having an alkaline added to the hot bath, and sometimes the bagels having honey added to the bath. :shocked2:

Sure would like to know who figured out the lye bath for the dough on the soft pretzels..., it's counter intuitive I think....

:idunno:


LD
 
I used to make them with baking soda in the 90's, I like salted ones, wonder if they used to salt crystals to preserve the bread, would also harden the shell.
Basically they were partially boiled in baking soda water then baked.
 
Far out on the frontier is a picture that represents very few people living in America in pre 1850 times. Most lived in an area where people could spend a few days in the woods with out fear of Indian attacks and get home before their food ran out. Should you come from an area where folks at home ate pretzels they would fit in your haversack. Jed Smith probibly didn’t have one on his way to California, but may have enjoyed a few on his way across Missouri on the first leg of his last trip on the Santa Fe trail.
 
I did a little reading about the history of crackers. For something so rudimentary, supposedly the first were made in 1792, but they do seem a lot like flat bread which is much older. My favorite Cracker is OTC, the big round oyster crackers, made since 1848. Still hand made with the same recipe if you believe the stuff on the box. Now they are like some special gormet item and are very expensive. I remember when they were almost as cheap as saltines.
 
A couple things to question and ponder.....

Modern hard pretzels are leavened with yeast..if they weren't they would be as hard and inedible as hardtack. Yeast also adds flavor. It is also listed as an ingredient.

Are we sure that modern pretzels are dipped in a solution of baking soda or is it sodium carbonate?
Baking soda is listed as an ingredient....But I suspect it is to aid in leavening and flavor...

Sodium carbonate is the last ingredient listed....It has a PH much closer to lye....I suspect this is what the pretzels are dipped in.
 
The way I see it, they probably didn't have those little goldfish crackers in the 18th century road houses, so they had to eat Pretzels with their ale, especially when they ran out of popcorn.

Some "histories" suggest pretzels came over with the Germans around 1710. I'm not sure of the provenance.
 
According to what I read, baking soda in water when heated combines with carbon dioxide in the air and becomes Sodium carbonate (washing soda) So it may be that the baking soda is both the leavening agent as well as the basis for the listing of the sodium carbonate.
 
zimmerstutzen said:
According to what I read, baking soda in water when heated combines with carbon dioxide in the air and becomes Sodium carbonate (washing soda) So it may be that the baking soda is both the leavening agent as well as the basis for the listing of the sodium carbonate.

Sodium bicarbonate is CHNaO3 while sodium carbonate is Na2CO3. Simply heat baking soda or sodium bicarbonate in a 200°F oven for about an hour. Carbon dioxide and water will be given off, leaving dry sodium carbonate.

or....

Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3), is a chemical that can undergo a decomposition reaction when heated. At temperatures above 176 degrees Fahrenheit (80 degrees Celsius), sodium bicarbonate starts to break down into three compounds, forming sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), water (H2O) and carbon dioxide (CO2).

or.....

Make Sodium Carbonate

Sodium bicarbonate is CHNaO3 while sodium carbonate is Na2CO3. Simply heat baking soda or sodium bicarbonate in a 200°F oven for about an hour. Carbon dioxide and water will be given off, leaving dry sodium carbonate. This is the soda ash.

The chemical reaction for the process is:


2 NaHCO3(s) → Na2CO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O(g)

The compound will readily absorb water, forming the hydrate (returning to baking soda). You can store the dry sodium carbonate in a sealed container or with a desiccant to keep it dry or allow it to form the hydrate, as desired.

While sodium carbonate is fairly stable, it slowly decomposes in dry air to form sodium oxide and carbon dioxide. The decomposition reaction can be accelerated by heating the washing soda to 851 °C (1124 K).


So, as you see the process cannot take place in water...
 
zimmerstutzen said:
I did a little reading about the history of crackers. For something so rudimentary, supposedly the first were made in 1792, but they do seem a lot like flat bread which is much older. My favorite Cracker is OTC, the big round oyster crackers, made since 1848. Still hand made with the same recipe if you believe the stuff on the box. Now they are like some special gormet item and are very expensive. I remember when they were almost as cheap as saltines.


Yes, indeed. We grew up on "Oyster Stew" which in our case was really Oyster Soup and you had to have the Oyster Crackers to go with them. Nowadays when Oysters are so much more expensive than they used to be and not easy to find the Oyster Crackers, we only have it at family gatherings a couple/few times a year.

Gus
 
OTC® Oyster Crackers were introduced in Trenton, N.J., in 1847 by Adam Exton, an English immigrant. Exton conceived the idea of baking a cracker to be used in oyster stews. In 1848, one year after the Exton crackers arrived on the Trenton scene, Ezekiel Pullen began baking an "Original Trenton Cracker" in the kitchen of his home. He sold his crackers from the back of his wagon as he made his way along Trenton streets. Both businesses grew as a craze for oysters developed in the 1860s and 1870s. OTC ® crackers became available from wooden barrels in neighborhood stores and in seafood restaurants. During the Civil War, the Exton company supplied its crackers to the Union army.
 
Soda Ash or sodium carbonate was the original "quick leaven" until baking soda came around. A process to produce Soda Ash was patented by French Chemist LaBlanc in 1791, so..., it's technically an 18th century thing but is post AWI.

The fact one can simply change Sodium Bicarbonate into Soda Ash by baking it for a while, is very cool. My daughter has a recipe for making soft pretzels and it calls for a Sodium Carbonate solution immersion, before baking.

The stuff is also good for certain dye mordants and for removing certain grease stains or red wine stains from clothing.

LD
 
Loyalist Dave said:
Soda Ash or sodium carbonate was the original "quick leaven" until baking soda came around. A process to produce Soda Ash was patented by French Chemist LaBlanc in 1791, so..., it's technically an 18th century thing but is post AWI.

The fact one can simply change Sodium Bicarbonate into Soda Ash by baking it for a while, is very cool. My daughter has a recipe for making soft pretzels and it calls for a Sodium Carbonate solution immersion, before baking.

The stuff is also good for certain dye mordants and for removing certain grease stains or red wine stains from clothing.

LD

Ammonium Carbonate, or Salt of Hartshorn, is said to predate the use of Sodium Carbonate. This site dates it to the 17th century:

Hartshorn salt (ammonium carbonate), also known simply as hartshorn, and baker's ammonia, was used as a leavening agent, in the baking of cookies and other edible treats. It was used mainly in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a forerunner of baking powder.[7] A half-teaspoon of hartshorn can substitute for one teaspoon of baking powder. It is called for in old German and Scandinavian recipes and, although rarely used in modern times, may still be purchased as a baking ingredient. Hartshorn helps molded cookies such as Springerle to retain their intricate designs during baking. Cookies made with hartshorn can be kept for a long time without hardening. Use of hartshorn may turn some ingredients, such as sunflower seeds, green.

Ammonium carbonate is especially suited to thin, dry cookies and crackers. When heated, it releases ammonia and carbon dioxide gases, but no water. The absence of water allows cookies to cook and dry out more quickly, and thinner cookies allow the pungent ammonia to escape, rather than to remain trapped, as it would in a deeper mass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartshorn
 
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