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Tuesday, May 4, 2021
The Observer & Baker City Herald
BETWEEN
THE ROWS
WENDY SCHMIDT
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Oregon grape in bloom.
Our state
flower:
Oregon
grape
Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune-TNS
Finished soft pretzels, prepared and styled by Shannon Kinsella.
Our state fl ower, Oregon grape
(Mahonia aquifolium), is related to
Berberis (barberry). Easily grown, the
plant looks good in all seasons. Leaves
are divided into leafl ets that usually
have spiny teeth on the edges.
Bright yellow fl owers grow in a
dense mass at the end of branches this
time of year. I’ve noticed them all over
town.
Mahonia aquifolium is native from
British Columbia to Northern Califor-
nia. It grows to six feet tall, although
there are dwarf forms. Oregon grape
spreads by underground stems. The
leaves are 4-10 inches long with fi ve
to nine spiny-toothed, oval leafl ets,
glossy green turning bronzy in fall:
new growth is purplish-bronze. In cold
winter areas Mahonia can be grown in
full sun, but it does better in the shade.
(Control height and form by pruning).
It can grow from cuttings.
Other varieties are:
• Mahonia bealei — leather-leaf ma-
honia, all zones. This mahonia grows
10 to 12 feet with a prominent pattern
of vertical stems. Blooms at the ends
of stems in early spring, followed by
powdery blue berries. Plant in partial
shade; water generously.
• Mahonia fremontii — desert ma-
honia. Not hardy in our climate.
See Garden/Page 2B
A T ASTY T WIST
■ Making homemade soft pretzels is a simple and fun way to create a unique meal
James P. DeWan
The Daily Meal
If I had to guess, the fact that you’re carv-
ing time from your busy day to read this
suggests you may be new to this whole “how
to make pretzels at home” affair. Something
to keep in mind is that pretzels can be fairly
complicated, what with all the science and
so on — especially if you’re stretching for
pretzeled perfection.
Here’s me, though: Feh. Perfection, schmer-
fection. I just want some pretzels.
See, in my fevered estimation, fresh soft
pretzels, beastily yeasty and warm from the
oven, will always be good.
As such, I’ve made today’s Pathway to
Pretzels just about as easy as I can. No un-
usual ingredients. No multi-part mixing. No
extended fermentation. Just four easy steps:
mix, ferment, boil, bake.
What are pretzels made of?
Before we get started, let’s take a quick lap
around those ingredients. Because pretzels
are bread, they’re mostly just fl our, yeast, wa-
ter and salt. There’s also a sweetener to feed
the yeast and help with browning.
Traditionally, since pretzels are associated
with Germans and, consequently, beer, that
sweetener would be a malted barley syrup.
We’ll take the low road, though, and go with
simple brown sugar. Finally, there’s a little fat.
Fat shortens the gluten strands, helping to
keep your soft pretzels true to their adjective.
How to make pretzel dough
First, mix your dough. Some recipes call
for activating the yeast separately, but the
easy way is simply putting your ingredients
in the bowl of a stand mixer — all at once —
and running it with a dough hook for four to
fi ve minutes. Your dough should be soft and
smooth.
When your dough’s mixed, give it a couple
kneads and form it into a ball. Place it in a
greased bowl, cover it, and let it rise — what
the cool kids call “fermenting” — for an hour-
ish, until it’s about double in size.
How to shape pretzels
First, divide your dough into roughly
3-ounce pieces and keep them under plastic
until needed. Starting with one piece, roll the
dough back and forth beneath your palms
while moving your hands further apart, like
you’re making a Play-Doh snake about 18- to
24-inches long. Once the dough is rolled, it’ll
shrink back somewhat. Don’t panic.
Form the dough rope into a big circle with
the ends crossing by an inch or two, then fold
those ends back over onto the opposite side of
the dough.
There’s your pretzel. Set it on a parchment-
covered sheet pan and shape the remaining
pieces.
How (and why) to boil pretzels
Once your pretzels are shaped, here’s the
weird part: The boiling. The very idea of
dropping dough into boiling water is coun-
terintuitive, but fear not. We boil the pretzels
just long enough to gelatinize the starch on
the outside without cooking the dough on the
inside, about half a minute. This prevents the
dough from rising too much in the oven, keep-
ing the interior dense and chewy.
See Pretzels/Page 3B
Apprehensive
about artichokes?
Don’t be afraid
Ben Mims
Los Angeles Times
We all have cooking tasks that, for
whatever reason, we simply refuse
to do — the thought of doing them
prompts feelings of dread or disdain.
When I think of the arrival of spring
each year, I’m reminded of my per-
sonal hell: preparing artichokes.
It’s prime artichoke season and
although I love seeing the pyrami-
dal stacks at farmers markets and
encourage anyone curious to cook
with them, it won’t be me. I know
that won’t win me popularity points
with a California readership, but let
me explain.
I grew up in the South at a time
when artichokes came only in
cans or jars or from the freezer. My
mother would always make what
she called “artichoke tea sandwich-
es” with canned artichokes, chopping
and mixing them with mayonnaise
and dry ranch dressing seasoning
before slathering the mix between
two slices of wheat bread. She’d
trim the crusts, as you must do for
tea sandwiches, and set them in the
fridge to get nice and cold before a
party. The result was kind of like a
vegan tuna fi sh sandwich before I
knew such a thing existed.
In culinary school, when I fi rst
encountered fresh artichokes and
their impenetrable outer petals
— botanically, the part we eat is
an immature fl ower bud — I was
intrigued. But when I learned
that before they are cooked they
must be “turned” — painstakingly
trimmed, pared, de-spiked and
de-choked, all before they turn
brown from air exposure — I felt …
exhausted. The ratio of preparation
work to taste payoff was egregious-
ly unbalanced.
I appreciated knowing where
the canned iterations came from
but with my eyes opened to what
it took to get them there, I vowed
to never subjugate myself to such
masochism again. Artichokes
would just be something I didn’t
Ben Mims/Los Angeles Times-TNS
Canned artichokes allow you to make delicious appetizers, like this elegant tart.
eat again, and I swore off cooking
them unless forced to for work.
Of course, I learned later that you
can boil or steam the whole thing and
break off the petals with ease, one by
one, to dip in butter or mayonnaise, but
even that seemed like too much work
to someone not raised on the practice.
And as much as I now understand the
value of the work that goes into prepar-
ing them for cooking, I place a higher
value on the time it takes to cook al-
most anything else. That said, I’ll gladly
spend hours picking minuscule nibbles
of meat from crawfish shells, so we all
have our contradictions.
See Artichokes/Page 2B