Category: News

PRETZEL SHORTBREAD

My friend, Jonathan Auer­bach, intro­duced me to these cook­ies when I was on a vis­it to NYC some years ago.  The orig­i­nals hail from the Lost Bak­ery, and are worth a try.  After some reverse engi­neer­ing and some addi­tion­al pref­er­ences for my taste, I came up with this recipe.  It is del­i­cate and the al dente is a lit­tle more ten­der than the Lost Bak­ery ver­sion, which has a more bis­cot­ti-style crunch.

With­out putting too fine a point on it, these are amaz­ing, and worth the risk of burn­ing the beje­sus out of your skin.  This recipe uses food-grade lye, and I don’t find that a bak­ing soda bath is a good sub­sti­tute for lots of rea­sons (includ­ing that awful, bit­ter fla­vor and the neces­si­ty of a warm water bath, which makes the raw dough fall apart).   Just buy the damned lye and use rub­ber gloves.  You’ll be fine.  Your oth­er option is to make pret­ty much any oth­er cook­ie in the world, because the rest do not use lye.

2 sticks soft unsalt­ed but­ter

1/2 cup sug­ar

¼ cup confectioner’s sug­ar

½ tsp sea salt

3 egg yolks

1 cup flour

1 ¼ cup pret­zel “flour” (pret­zels ground to pow­der), made from hard pret­zels

2 tbl sodi­um hydrochlo­ride (lye)

4 cups ice water

Pret­zel salt

INSTRUCTIONS:

Using pad­dle attach­ment, mix but­ter until smooth and creamy.  Add sug­ars and blend until ful­ly blend­ed, then add salt and eggs.  Add the two flours, and blend just until the flour dis­ap­pears.  Do not over­mix. Shape into a log about 12 inch­es long, wrap in wax paper, and refrig­er­ate at least  2 hours, or up to 3 days.

When ready to bake, pre­heat oven to 350 and put cook­ies in freez­er.  Line a bak­ing sheet with parch­ment then grease parch­ment.  Using rub­ber gloves, dis­solve lye into water using a non-reac­tive con­tain­er, such as a Pyrex bowl.  Refrig­er­ate so it will stay cold.  Remove cook­ies from freez­er and slice in ¼ inch to ½ inch pieces.  Poke twice with a fork. Remove lye water from refrig­er­a­tor and dip cook­ies in lye for about 15 sec­onds and trans­fer them to bak­ing sheets.  For this, I use a spat­u­la that is per­fo­rat­ed, but you could also use a run­ci­ble spoon or tongs.  The cook­ies  will be wet and may pud­dle a bit on the parch­ment.  Sprin­kle salt atop each cook­ie, then bake, 12 at a time, for 10–15 min­utes (depend­ing on thick­ness) until dark brown.  Remove from oven, cool, and peel from parch­ment.  ENJOY!

NOTES:
Short­bread is typ­i­cal­ly made with­out egg.  You can try that here if you like, but, because a good por­tion of the “flour” is ground pret­zels, they can fall apart a bit.  Adding the egg keeps them from crum­bling when they are in the lye bath.  If you choose to go egg­less, slice, then ful­ly freeze the cook­ies.

I use unsalt­ed but­ter here, because I find that unless you are very care­ful with your but­ter (and are using some­thing expen­sive, like Ker­ry­Gold), salt­ed but­ter con­tains more milk and water.  For tex­ture pur­pos­es, I like to go high fat. If you already use a very high qual­i­ty but­ter, you could omit the added salt to the dough.

I have  also sub­sti­tut­ed egg yolks for egg whites in this recipe for a more ten­der cook­ie (if you know cook­ies, using egg yolks yield­’s a clas­sic sable).  The image pic­tured was made with egg yolks instead of whites.