Berke Family Pretzel Making!

Last December after I was unexpectedly able to be home for Christmas my mother sent me back to Hawaii with the Berke family recipe for German pretzels, passed down through generations of adventurous Berkes over the course of two centuries and two continents, all the way back across the sea to the Berke family bakery in Germany (which is still there today), to before an enterprising scion of the family decided to try his luck in the New World (though it should be noted that Berke is not a German name and we don't know where our intrepid forebears migrated from, though I have my theories…).

With that melodramatic opener out of the way, it's not like it's a secret recipe or anything. This weekend I upgraded my computer from Debian 8 to Debian 9, and while it was busy upgrading and I was twiddling my thumbs I decided to try making the Berke pretzels for the first time on my own (I've helped my mom make them in the past), and since I took some pictures along the way I'm going to share the recipe and process here in case anyone else wants to try (or I ever lose the hard copy!). You're going to need a few things to start with…

You can also see the chili I was cooking simultaneously in the crockpot in the background.

First, microwave ½ cup of lard with 2 cups of water for a minute or so until the lard melts. While that's heating up, sift together 3 cups of flour (preferably bread flour), ⅔ cup of powdered milk, ⅓ cup sugar, ½ teaspoon salt, and 1 tablespoon of yeast (as seen above).

Add the water/lard mixture to it and mix. This is best done by hand, as the mixture is incredibly sticky at this point. Add ⅓ cup more water and continue mixing, adding up to 4 cups of flour 1 cup at a time. Keep mixing and kneading with your hands until the dough is just not sticky (this may require a little more flour; it did when I made them).

The right hand knows what the left is doing, and is very grateful it's too busy taking photos to be involved.

This dough is so sticky I can only hope my fingers are still attached; I haven't seen them in about 5 minutes.

At this point, pour a little oil in the bowl and slosh the dough around in it so the top is oiled, then set to rise for about an hour (cover the bowl while the dough is rising).

I ended up letting this dough rise about 2½ hours by accident.

Now, give that dough a good punch.

Punch!

Next, start some lye water. Mix 2 tablespoons of (food-grade) lye (sodium hydroxide, NaOH) in ~2 quarts of water over very low heat in a glass or enamel pot ONLY. Don't let it boil, and use plastic utensils! (The lye water will react with metal such as aluminum to create hydrogen, so don't let it spill and keep away from sources of open flame. You can flush it down the drain when done, though.)

To prevent boiling of the lye water you can use an improvised bain-marie like this one

 Next, roll out the pretzels. An easy way to get a good size is to divide the dough into 36 pieces.

Yes, I know. My pretzel-shaping skills are abysmal.

 (You can let them rise a little after this.) Next, prepare some pans by covering them in heavy-duty aluminum foil and spraying liberally with Pam. Then start dropping pretzels in the warm lye water one by one for ~15 seconds before placing them on the prepared pans.

I'm being very careful here not to let the metal handle touch the water, while taking a photo with the other hand.

That foil is quite necessary if you don't want the lye water messing up your pans.

Sprinkle with kosher sea salt to taste, then bake for 10 minutes at 400 °F. (In my experience, what seems like a lot of salt when you're shaking can be hardly noticeable after baking. See the salt in the pictures below? I could barely taste it, so don't be afraid to be liberal with it.) If they come out looking like the ones below, congratulations, and enjoy!

As you may be able to tell, my ability to make a pretzel shape is pretty much nil, and this pretzel expresses my feelings on the subject pretty accurately:

First Grumpy Cat, now Grumpy Pretzel.

Anyway, that's all there is to it! Well, “all.” It's a significant amount of work and will take at least a few hours, so you may want to make a double batch to get more pretzels out of it (three dozen will go surprisingly quickly!) A hui hou, and happy baking!