Bavarian Pretzels and a Zugspitze Memory
One more pretzel.
Hubby and I recently came home from a few days away at the Blue Mountains in Ontario.
It was only a short road trip, but it gave us just enough time to clear the cobwebs.
I’d love to tell you I switched off my phone so I could relax properly, but the signal was so unreliable that I was disconnected whether I liked it or not.
As it turned out, I liked it very much.
We even rode the gondola up the mountain. As I watched the village grow smaller below us, I wasn’t at the Blue Mountains anymore. I was back in Germany with my son Eran, riding up the Zugspitze during our two-week bus tour.
The Zugspitze is Germany’s highest mountain, and from where we stood, we could barely see the top.
Between you and me, I was nervous that day. Still, up we went.
At the summit, Austria was just a short walk away, Italy was visible in the distance, and Eran was beside me asking where he could find a pretzel.
He craved pretzels throughout our trip. I’m pretty sure he had a brezel at almost every stop we made.
And I’ll confess, a pretzel really does taste better when you’re sitting on top of Germany.
There was also a glass floor at the summit, with thousands of feet of nothing but air beneath your shoes. I stepped onto it, and I’m still not entirely sure how.
And can you believe it? For all the pretzels Eran sampled on that trip, I still haven’t had the chance to make him mine.
He lives in Wales and I live in Ontario, so we don’t often find ourselves together in my kitchen.
One day, though, I want to see whether my pretzel-loving son can tell that I use baked baking soda instead of lye.
Lye is the traditional method, but I use baking soda that has been baked in a low oven for an hour. It then makes a bath that still gives the pretzels their deep brown color and chewy crust.
Our few days at the Blue Mountains reminded me how closely food and memory are tied together. One gondola ride brought back that day on the Zugspitze, along with Eran’s search for yet another brezel.
Recipes such as those for pretzels carry those memories and a piece of our heritage with them. That's why they're worth sharing and saving before they are forgotten.
And the next time Eran and I are together, I hope to add one more memory by finally making those pretzels for him.
Tschüss!
Oma Gerhild
P.S. Today's recipe: Bavarian Pretzels
For the traditional version, Ferdinand, a former Bavarian baker, shared his recipe with lye: Laugen Brezeln
