Fun with Flour

My first humble attempt at making pretzels. I didn't use a lye bath, but I did boil them in salt water with baking soda. I found some nice big salt crystals which were perfect for sprinkling on top. I also tried a couple with sesame seeds on top, and one with currants in the dough (bottom right). They did come out nice and chewy, but the result was more like a honey whole wheat bagel with salt on top, than a pretzel. I think a portion of that was due to the whole wheat; they didn't rise as high and weren't as light and fluffy inside. But I'm fairly certain that the lye bath would have given them a more pretzel-like outer crust. Stay tuned for further attempts and my quest for food grade lye.

Silas, a pretzel connoisseur, didn't turn his nose up at my pretzels exactly, but he far preferred his flour on the floor. I mixed up a big batch of play dough this morning and Silas played with it for a good hour and a half. I went to all the trouble of making it different colors and I think he would have been just as happy with white. I was rather proud of myself for having the the idea to use the sugar-less Kool-Aid we had (inexplicably, hauled all the way from Minnesota) stuffed in the back of the cupboard. And for brown, cocoa powder. It took me a long time to figure out what the smell of the sweet grape-y purple and the chocolate brown reminded me of. Tootsie pop!

Finally, we're having quesadillas for dinner tonight. I'm too lazy to go to the store and buy a package of tortillas but not to grind my own flour. The King Arthur Whole Grain Baking book has a little paragraph about how great (nutty, sweet, tender, flavorful) the tortillas are made with freshly ground flour. I have a bag of wheat berries for sprouting so I weighted out the amount needed for the recipe and tossed them into the blender for a few minutes. Bam! Flour! I haven't baked them or tasted them yet, but so far so good.