Bread-Bakers v104.n040.7

Hi Gloria

I know what you mean - there's nothing like a pretzel that's crunchy on the 
outside and soft inside, and it's one of the very few thinks I miss in the 
South of France.  I grew up in Bavaria, and the bakers in our village 
varied greatly in their ability to produce the perfect item.  There was 
one, whose pretzels were just heaven.  The end result seemed to depend on 
the lye solution, which was a very closely guarded secret.  I've found a 
good recipe on the internet at <http://www.cs.uml.edu/~dm/brezla-2/>, but 
have never yet achieved the crunchy crust.  I wonder if it's something to 
do with oven temperature, a little along the lines of the French bakers 
baking at lower temperatures to get a crunch baguette?  Some people 
advocate dropping the pretzels into a boiling lye solution, but I don't 
think that the Bavarian method is that, you'd never get the cracked crust 
from the oven spring that way.  If you do find out how to make the pretzels 
crunchy please let me know.

Best wishes,
Andreas
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