Today’s theme is: things that are other things. A couple of weeks ago, I made pretzel breads, from the Bread Bible, as this month’s selection from the bread baking group I’m participating in. This weekend, Jay requested a repeat of the pretzels, so they must have been good. I also made mini gateaux breton cookies this weekend. Yup, that’s mini cake cookies. Pretzel breads and cake cookies.
Lately, I seem to be forgetting to take process pictures of my baking. I’m choosing to take that as a sign that I’m actually engrossed in what I’m doing, and the fact that I’m not picking up my phone every few minutes to take a picture is a good thing. Makes for boring blog posts, though.
The first thing I baked this weekend was the mini gateaux breton. The process is really no different from the last time I made a Gateau Breton. The only difference is how it’s shaped. In this case, it’s scooped into little tiny balls, and placed in 38 mini brioche pans, which I don’t have. So, I used a 24-cup mini muffin pan, and about 10 spots in a silicone brownie pan.
They came out looking like the picture at the top of the post. And tasting yummy. Can’t go wrong with almonds, butter, sugar, and Kirsch.
As I said, I baked the pretzel breads again this weekend. I took a couple of shaping pictures the first time, but it turns out that the shaping instructions in my version of The Bread Bible are more confusing than they ought to be. Here’s the correction from Rose’s Errata page: “In the PRETZEL BREAD on page 172, step #2..Empty the dough onto a counter and shape it into a ball. Let it sit covered for 1 hour (it will relax and spread out slightly).Divide it into 4 pieces, divide each piece into 3 (total 12 pieces–about 1.3 ounces/33 grams each) and roll each into a ball. Shape each ball into a tapered 4-inch little football,, 1-inch wide in the middle.”
The original version has you flattening the 12 balls, for some reason.
Then they’re shaped into “tapered footballs”, then slashed, then dipped in a lye solution, for the signature shiny pretzel crust.
As soon as they came out of the oven, hubby slathered one in mustard and handed me half.
Since these are relatively quick and easy, and somebody around here really seems to like them, I suspect I’ll be making them fairly often!
eatsndrinks.ca 
Both turned out great! I wondered if a mini cupcake pan would work.
LikeLike