Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 27, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1883 — How Bretzels Are Made. [ARTICLE]

How Bretzels Are Made.

Tlie best white flour is used, and yeast dough is made similar to that •used in the manufacture of bread. In the bake-rooms is a twenty-gallon kettle filled with boiling lye, made with water and potash, which is bought in cans. A workman seizes a piece of dough, rolls it out into long rolls as large as a bologna sausage, and then cuts the roll into pieces about three inches long. One of these pieces is rolled into a long strip, large in the middle and small at the ends. The workman places a thumb and forefinger

at each end of the strip, crosses his Tnwida in a twinkling, dabs the ends into the fat part of the strip by the same motion, and the bretzel is shaped and ready for the lye kettle. Another workman drops them into the boiling lye in batches of twelve, and keeps them there only a moment while he fishes out twelve he has just put in a few seconds before. About four seconds is the time required for the dough to take on a mahogany color. While the bretzels are still wet they are sprinkled with salt and then shoved into a very hot oven .where they are quickly baked. Steamed or hard bretzels are made from cracker dough. A machine mixes and rolls the dough, and cuts the rolls into short lengths, which the workman makes into bretzels by hand. He makes 150 an hour. After boiling them in the lye, salting them, and baking them in an oven they are put in boxes, where they are dried by steam. This process renders them friable. —New York Sun.