This cheesy dipping sauce is thick and rich and very flavorful. I know it looks like a lot of ingredients, but it is basically a flavored mornay sauce (bechamel sauce with cheese), just like you’d make for macaroni and cheese. A perfect dipping sauce for Chef Jenni’s homemade best soft pretzels ever.
Ingredients
1 oz. butter
½ oz. flour
1 teaspoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon grain mustard
Salt and white pepper, to taste
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup half and half (½ milk - ½ cream)
Two ounces Taleggio cheese, cut into small cubes
1 ounce freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup good quality porter (beer)
Put the porter in a sauce pan and reduce over medium to medium-low heat by half. Don’t let it boil rapidly, as this could make the porter taste bitter. Set aside.
Heat a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the butter.
When butter is melted and bubbling, whisk in the flour, mustard powder, grain mustard, salt and pepper. Cook for two minutes.
Add the cream and half and half (if you want a little less fat, by all means use 2 cups of whole milk. Just know that your final sauce won’t be quite as thick).
Bring to a boil, whisking well. Boil gently for ten minutes. Add the porter and whisk.
Off the heat, stir in the Taleggio and Parmesan until melted and smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings as necessary.
Serve warm as a dipping sauce for the pretzels. This sauce will keep in the refrigerator for three-four days.
Variations
You could certainly substitute a nice ale for the porter and use cheddar cheese instead of Taleggio and Parmesan.
I know you’ll love the pretzels, and I encourage you to try this sauce. It might not be exactly what you’re used to, but it is excellent. Enjoy!
After reading Chef Vogel’s contemplation of the pretzel, I decided that I wanted to get into the act, too. I agree that most mass-produced hard pretzels are generally eaten in a fugue state while sipping a beer and watching a game above the bar. At its heart, though, the pretzel is a delightful specialty bread and deserves a bit more respect.
A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be part of the opening team for a gastropub. We did everything from painting picture frames to mopping the floors to setting the opening menu. The restaurant was split into three parts: a chef’s room, the main dining area, and the bar. The bar was quite the showpiece, and we always had a wonderful selection of fine American craft beers on tap. We would grudgingly hand someone a can of Budweiser if they insisted, but we only kept a few in the fridge.
Part of the fun, and challenge, of working at a restaurant that had “pub” in its name was trying to find as many ways as possible to integrate our great selection of beers into the food without its seeming forced or contrived. Enter, the soft pretzel—the quintessential bar snack that we made over into the most popular appetizer on the menu.
Secret #1 Feed The Yeast With Sugar
There are two secrets to making great soft pretzels that I will now share with you. When making a yeasted bread product, bakers always like to feed the yeast a bit of sugar to give it a head start. That sugar can be in the form of honey, granulated sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, even maple syrup. But the form that lends itself to the traditional soft pretzel is malt syrup-more or less the same stuff used in beer making. The malt syrup provides a subtle yet complex flavor that just says “soft pretzel.”
Secret #2 Poach The Pretzels In Alkalized Water
Secret number two is to poach the pretzels in alkalized water, or water with a high pH. The hot water provides the gelatinization necessary for a shiny, crackly crust, and the low pH encourages deep browning in the oven so your pretzels come out pretzel-colored instead of roll-colored. Your standard bag of hard pretzels get a bath in a lye solution. In the home kitchen, this can be more than a little risky, so a good substitute is baking soda, one of the most alkalizing ingredients in the kitchen. It’s cheap and readily available, and it works.
Now that you know the secrets, on with the recipe.
Soft Pretzels
These pretzels are made with the straight dough method. That just means that you put all in ingredients in the mixer at one time and then let it mix. Very easy.
2 oz. melted butter
11.5 oz. water
¾ oz fresh yeast
2 ¼ teaspoons salt
½ oz. malt syrup
22 oz. all purpose flour
Egg wash
Salt
How to Make Soft Pretzels at Home
Dissolve the yeast in the water, and then put all ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook.
Start the mixer and knead on medium-low speed for 8 minutes.
When the dough is soft and springy, remove it from the mixer, put it in a large greased bowl. Spray the top of the dough with a little vegetable oil to keep a skin from forming. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour depending on the temperature in your kitchen.
Once the dough has doubled in volume, gently press out the gasses. Divide the dough into 3 oz. pieces. This recipe makes about 12 pretzels, so if you don’t want to weigh the dough, divide the dough in thirds and divide each third into fourths.
Roll each piece of dough into a 2 foot long rope. Twist into a pretzel shape, or whatever shape you like, really.
How to Twist Pretzels Video
Here’s a quick video with Chef Jenni showing you how to twist a pretzel for this recipe. If you want to see the entire pretzel procedure on video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIhioueIzQI
Place the pretzels on two greased cookie sheets or half sheet pans. Do not line them with parchment. I learned the hard way that this is a bad idea. Trust me.
Put the pretzels in the freezer until very firm. This step is not strictly necessary, but it makes it much easier to poach them and put them back on trays without their losing their shape.
Once the pretzels are frozen, bring 10 cups of water (1/2 gallon plus 1 pint) to a boil with ½ cup baking soda.
When the water is boiling, turn the heat down some to keep it at a gentle boil, and place three frozen pretzels in the water. After one minute, carefully remove the pretzels with a large slotted spoon or a spider and put them back on the baking sheet. Repeat until all the pretzels have taken a 60-second dip in the water.
Whisk one egg together with a teaspoon of water. Brush this egg wash evenly on all the pretzels. Don’t glob it on; you just need a thin coat. At this point, you can sprinkle them with kosher salt, but it will tend to sink in, not giving you that cool salted pretzel look. They’ll still taste great. If you’re looking for a salt that won’t melt, you can certainly purchase pretzel salt through Amazon. It is inexpensive and goes a long way.
At the restaurant, we wanted to “fancy them up a bit,” so we used a light sprinkle of sel gris on the pretzels. This gives a wonderful result, but sel gris is pretty expensive. It’s your call. You could also sprinkle them with poppy seeds or sesame seeds.
Bake at 400F until deeply golden brown (pretzel colored), about 15 minutes. For the most even baking, turn the baking sheets after about 8 minutes.
Tomorrow I’ll show you how to make a Taleggio Porter Fondue to be used as a dipping sauce.
The Perfect Romantic Music For Valentine’s Day Dinner
Not to date myself too much, but I remember when I was just learning how to cook back in the 80’s, an ex-girlfriend turned me on to the music of Sade. We listened to her 1984 debut album Diamond Life endlessly while preparing special meals in her tiny studio apartment kitchen. Your Love Is King, Smooth Operator, Hang On To Your Love are ingrained in my head. When I hear them now, they bring back some fabulous memories.
With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I wanted to let you know about Sade’s brand new album Soldier of Love that was just released. This is her sixth studio album in her 25-year history and the first since her Lover’s Rock album back in 2000.
When asked why so long, she replied, “ I only make records when I feel I have something to say. I’m not interested in releasing music just for the sake of selling something.”
OK, I like that integrity and I like her music. Susan from Epic Records was kind enough to send me a preview copy of her CD and I can tell you her signature sultry florid voice and ultra cool attitude come shining through. As Chris Richards from the Washington Post says,
“She’s plaintive and pining as the album opens with “The Moon and the Sky,” her own vocal harmonies following her like a sad shadow. “You had the keys to the car. You had every star, every one of them twinkling,” she sings, soberly blending the mundane and the cosmic. “
Sade, born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, is back with the other original principals bassist Paul Denman, guitarist and sax player Stuart Matthewman and keyboardist Andrew Hale. They recorded Soldier of Love near her home in the countryside of southwest England. You can hear from the record they are still enjoying doing what they do 25 years later.
With two young kids at home who eat every dinner with us unless they are sleeping over at one of their friends, I’m not typically setting the atmosphere for a quiet romantic dinner. Saying that, my kids love to eat supper in the dining room with candles and we often have something playing softly in the background. Last night I turned the kids onto Sade by playing her new CD and they didn’t hate it. My wife and I loved it.
