Pretzels

The dough behaved strangely and so did I. 

My problem is with the dough's texture. It seemed too dry but transferring water by hand did not help it. It is too soft and too fragile and lacks the elasticity I need. It acts like insufficient protein. This worries me about the levain and a little bit about the flour. 

A rolled snake-shape  was dipped in lye solution and broke apart. The second one broke apart too. This forced me to think of a way to coat the pretzels without dipping them. I learned I can pour the liquid over and drain the lye solution back into the bowl. It is a much easier way of coating the pretzels with lye solution. No need for rubber gloves if you're careful with the dipper. But this batch turned out splotchy and unattractive. I never had a batch turn out blotchy like this. I was disappointed. 

I ate one anyway. It is delicious.

I took the pile of pretzels to a nearby shop to give to two ladies there that I met on a previous visit. I was late today and arrived just as the ladies had already departed and the guy there said, "sorry, just us guys." Oh well. One of the guys said he didn't much care for pretzels and another guy came in with a pizza for lunch. So the whole plan worked out very poorly.

The guy there said, "what this needs is mustard." I whipped out a jar of mustard that I brought for the ladies. 

Within a minute the original guy, the guy who doesn't care for pretzels and the guy with the pizza were all scarfing these pretzels and remarking on the superior mustard. The pizza guy just blew off his pizza in favor of this pretzel and mustard. I let them have the jar of mustard. It was old anyway, two weeks old, and it is much MUCH better when fresh. Then it blows your face right off with all the aromatic force that mustard seeds can ... convocate. Psyche! You thought I was going to say muster.