Brezeln and Cider

It hasn't been long since our last post, but we've been busy! Christina has handed in all but one of her papers required for this semester, the last one is a proposal for her Masters dissertation. She'll finish it with time to spare and it'll be fun to read I'm sure.
Of course sometimes she needs a break from the tedium.
Yesterday Tina and I bottled up her strawberry pear cider. The bottles now have to sit for a week while they build up CO², and then sit for a further two weeks in a cool place. These final two weeks are important, because the cider needs time to mature. It is drinkable before then, but after at least two weeks the cider will have dropped the majority of its harsh flavours and what you're left with is pretty smooth. The same goes for beer, though the longer you generally wait to taste it, the better.

Specific gravity, consistent for the second straight day.

The bottom of the barrel.

A quick pic before we finish.

After our bottling session we were tempted to start making croissant, but with only 10 hours left in the day there wasn't enough time. The recipe we want to try comes from Julie Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It takes about 11 hours to make them right, and we aren't keen enough bakers to want to work through the night to have croissant for breakfast.
So since we wussed out, we decided to make good ol' fashion German Brezeln (pretzels). It'd be our first time making them, since in Germany there is a baker at pretty much every other intersection where you could buy a relatively freshly baked one for 1,50€.
Christina found a recipe online that got some great reviews; it is in German so we'll have to translate it for you. Have a gander at our Recipes section in the near future.
In the mean time, here are a couple pictures of our Brezel experience. They are very easy to make, easy to store in the freezer, and simple to bake in the morning in a toaster oven for breakfast! So exciting! Brezeln, a part of your healthy and balanced breakfast! :)

Tina hard at work.

Anyway, we couldn't wait for breakfast, so we made them our dinner. You've got to understand, it has been almost 8 months since we last ate Brezeln...  Since we couldn't, in good conscience, just eat Brezeln for supper, we made a small egg salad and had some cheese and grainy mustard with them.

German engineered finished product.

All in all, I must say, we made some pretty damn good Brezeln. Tina said it best: A lot of the time when you bake at home you could say that it turned out great, but it wasn't quite as good as you could get at the bakery. These little babies turned out as good, if not better than from the baker! And so easy! Too bad in Germany hardly anyone would take the time to make them since it is just so easy to go for a short walk to pick some up. Ah well, I guess they have to support those bakers if they want to keep them around.
We, on the other hand, don't have that luxury, so we have to create our own luxuries.

Well, it's been fun., but now I am going to watch game 3 before I write a cover letter. Ta for now.
Matt