Our Fun Day with Anna and Other Weekend Shenanigans

For Christmas last year I bought Alison a book about sourdough. She loves the book and uses it all of the time. In the back of the book are a bunch of recipes. I was looking at it a few weeks ago to find a sourdough pancake recipe. While perusing the other recipes I noticed one for soft German pretzels. I immediately thought of our niece Anna when I saw that pretzel recipe. She loves pretzels. I arranged a day with Kristin where Anna could come make pretzels with me. 

The pretzel recipe is quite involved. I started the night before. I made a sourdough levain to use in the recipe. Then the following day Anna came over and we assembled all of the ingredients. This is Anna's favorite part of the process. She loved measuring out the flour and all of the other ingredients and pouring them into the bowl. Then we mixed the pretzels by hand. This was also an exciting step for Anna. She had fun getting her hands slimy. 

After the dough was prepared it needed to proof for 3 hours and 30 minutes. While it was proofing we worked on making ice cream (one of Alison's cousins got married so the rest of her cousins were in town and we had a family dinner on Sunday and of course, we wanted to make some Salt & Straw ice cream). We also ate breakfast and then we headed to a nearby splash pad. It wasn't the warmest of days, but Anna had running through the water. It seemed like her favorite thing to do was to direct me to stand in places where I would get wet - at least that elicited the biggest laughs. 

We head back to Blake and Debbie's house where Anna got to take a bath - not her favorite thing we did today and then the pretzels were ready for the next step. We split the dough into 12 equal portions and rolled them out. This was a bit tedious. So Anna helped with a few and then she chose to go home. Alison and I finished rolling them out and then shaped them into something that mostly resembled pretzels and stuck them in the fridge to proof a bit more. 

Then we met up with the rest of Alison's family (her immediate family and all of her cousins, except for the one that got married the night before) at Asian Star. Asian Star has been a tradition with the Alder side (her mother's side) of the family for many years. It has been quite a few years since we all went there together since her aunt and uncle and most of their kids don't live in Utah anymore. It was really fun to see everyone and hear about their lives. These big together are so few and far between - which really makes them that much more special. 

Alison and I finished the pretzels later that evening. We gave them a boiling baking soda bath and baked them until they were golden brown. We shared the first couple with Blake and Debbie and saved the rest to share with Anna. 

On Sunday Kristin hosted a get-together with one of Alison's cousins - Jenny and her family. Alison and I made lasagna and we brought Meyer lemon buttermilk custard with blueberry jam. It was one of our better efforts at Salt & Straw ice cream. The flavor was spot on and the texture was excellent. We had a fun night with the family playing games and enjoying delicious food. Anna was so happy that we brought the finished pretzels. She made sure each of her little cousins got their own personal pretzel. It was very cute. 

Going into the weekend we were only planning to spend time with Anna, but we were glad to have a fun weekend full of family activities.