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Sugar Pretzels
1/2 yeast cake 2 tablespoons lukewarm water 1 cup thick cream 3 eggs 1/2 cup sugar 3 cups flour 1/4 teaspoon salt Dissolved yeast cake in lukewarm water, heat cream, add eggs and sugar and beat thoroughly. When lukewarm, add dissolved yeast cake, then half the flour, mixing well. Cover and set in a warm place until light about 1 hour. Work in rest of flour and salt and let rise again till it doubles its bulk. Work into long strips, and form into pretzels, sugaring the tops. Place on a well greased sheet, let stand ten minutes, then bake in a moderate oven till brown, about 15 minutes.
A rich, sweet yeast dough shaped like a pretzel rather than a boiled, lye-dipped one. The measurements translate directly; only the yeast and the oven need interpretation.
- Yeast cakeA yeast cake of this era was compressed fresh yeast; the common small cake ran about 0.6 oz, though larger cakes were also sold. Half a cake is roughly 3/4 to 1 teaspoon of active dry or instant yeast, which can be stirred straight into the 2 tablespoons of lukewarm water.
- Thick creamThis means heavy or whipping cream, around 36% fat, not sour cream or a thickened cultured product. The fat is what makes the crumb tender, so light cream or half-and-half will give a drier, more bread-like pretzel.
- Order of heatingThe hinge of the method: the recipe has the eggs beaten into the heated cream, then waits until the mixture is lukewarm before the yeast goes in. In practice it is safer to let the cream cool toward blood heat before adding the eggs, since very hot cream will curdle them, and the mixture must be no more than lukewarm for the yeast, which begins to suffer well above blood heat.
- Moderate ovenA moderate oven of this period is roughly 350 to 375F. Fifteen minutes is realistic for pretzels of finger thickness; a heavy, thick strip will need 18 to 20.
- Sugaring the topsPress the shaped pretzels into granulated sugar or scatter it on just before baking rather than at shaping, since the sugar dissolves into the wet dough while it rests and will not read as a crust. Coarse or pearl sugar holds its shape best.
- Handling the doughWith cream and three eggs this is a soft, sticky dough. Half an hour in the refrigerator after the second rise makes it far easier to roll into even ropes without flouring it heavily.
- The ten-minute standThat short rest on the sheet is a proof, not a formality, but it is deliberately brief so the pretzel shape stays legible. Do not let them go until fully puffed or the loops close up.
- YieldThree cups of flour should give somewhere around a dozen to sixteen pretzels of 3 to 4 inches, depending on how thin the strips are rolled. They are best the day they are baked.