When Petra posted the recipe for Ulmer Laugenspatzen (Lye sparrows of Ulm) I thought instantly “I have to bake this!”. But then I baked a lot of other breads and forget about the little sparrows. But last weekend they told of lots of snow in the weather forecast so we knew that we we would stay better at  home and do little beside of shovel snow and drinking hot tea afterwards. When snow is falling outside I like to be in the kitchen baking Christmas cookies and bread. After baking a lot of cookies I wanted to eat something salty and so I remembered the Laugenspatzen.

I changed the recipe a little bit (of course!) because I used a different preferment then Petra. That was due to the fact that I plan to bake some toast bread and thought that it would be easier to use the same preferment for both dough.

The Laugenspatzen are very delicious, soft and salty.

Ulmer Laugenspatzen

Preferment

• 300g flour Type 550
• 225g water
• 2g fresh yeast
• 6g Salt

Dough

• whole preferment
• 1 kg flour Type 550
• 40 g butter
• 13g Malt
• 20g Salt
• 20g fresh yeast
• 455g Water

Lye

• 4% NaOH

Topping

• coarse sea salt

Mix all Ingredients for the preferment and ferment for 12 hours at room temperature.

The next day place all ingredients in the bowl of the kitchen machine and knead for 5 min at slow speed and 3 minutes at high speed. Rest the dough for 5 min then divide the dough in pieces of 80g each.

Roll each piece to a strand with a length of 25 cm with a thin end and a thick end. Make a knot of the strand, the thick end will be the head of the sparrow and the thin end will be the tail.

Proof for 30 min at room temperature and another 30 min in the fridge.

Dip the pretzels for 10 seconds in the lye, then take them out with a skimmer. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and cut the thick end horizontal with the scissors (beak)and the thin end vertical (tail).

Bake at 230°C for 18 min.