Overcoming Fears in the Kitchen

For the longest time, I’ve had a somewhat irrational fear of using yeast in baking recipes. My main concern was always that the yeast was old or stale and wouldn’t work and the recipe that I’d have been so looking forward to making would have to be put on hold AND I’d have wasted all those ingredients! Like I said, it’s an irrational fear. But I’m happy to report that I conquered it this past weekend!

After being inspired by my friend Chelsea mentioning that she was going to make pretzels in honour of Oktoberfest, I decided that I’d try my hand at making them too. As I scoured the internet for pretzel recipes, it became clear that I’d have to blow the dust of my dry-active yeast packets hiding in the back of the cupboard in order to tackle this project. I ended up using a combination of recipes for this task: Alton Brown’s Soft Pretzel recipe and Katie’s Homemade Auntie Anne’s Pretzel recipe.

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For the pretzel base, I used Alton’s recipe (using Earth Balance sticks instead of unsalted butter) and I resorted to Katie’s recipe for the baking soda wash. I finally was able to use the dough blade attachment for my food processor to make these! It made combining the ingredients a cinch!

After combining the ingredients, I covered the bowl in plastic wrap and placed it in the non-heated oven with the light on for about an hour (it makes for a great warm place for the dough to do it’s thang). This was always the part that made me anxious – “What if it doesn’t rise? What if I just wasted all of those ingredients for nothing?!” – so you can imagine my excitement when I opened the oven after an hour to see this:

Look at that dough! From this point, the rest was relatively not-heart-pounding-inducing. The dough gets divided into 8 balls which are then rolled into long ropes and folded into the classic pretzel form.

As I mentioned above, I resorted to Katie’s method for the baking soda wash (mostly because I didn’t have 2/3 of a cup of baking soda to spare as is indicated in Alton Brown’s recipe). After the pretzels have had their fun in the baking soda & water mixture, they’re placed in a pre-heated oven and baked to perfection.

I mean, just look at that perfectly golden crust! I sprinkled some sea salt on prior to baking which really brought out the authentic pretzel flavour. They were so delicious! (And they may or may not have been completely devoured within 36 hours. With the help of 3 friends of course). I’m interested in trying these as buns/rolls too. As well as potentially playing with different flavour combinations – sugar & cinnamon anyone??

I’m really happy I decided to buck up and go ahead with making these beauties instead of chickening out like I normally would have. I love being in the kitchen and creating new things, so it didn’t make sense to limit my options by choosing not to use an unfamiliar ingredient for fear of failure. Now that I have these pretzels under my belt, the bread-world is my oyster! Breads, pizza crusts & cinnamon rolls, here I come!

Has anyone else ever tackled irrational fears in the kitchen (or elsewhere?)