Harris Family Farm, Pollock Pines, CA
When I was but a lad, my brother and I spent many hours making “Creepy Crawlers.” These were rubbery insects that kids would create by pouring “Plastigoop” into molds and cooking them on what amounts to a kid-scale hot plate that reached 400 degrees Fahrenheit. What could go wrong? The contraption was marketed by Mattel in the 1960s–an era when, evidently, consumer product safety wasn’t a thing.
I remember that the Plastigoop was strangely tasty . It wasn’t edible, of course, but somehow the combination of chemicals and carcinogens appealed to my 8-year-old palate, and so I snuck tastes of it whenever I was making Creepy Crawlers. A few years later I would do the same thing with “Vampire Blood,” which was marketed during the Halloween season. Now, put a pin in that while we discuss today’s pretzel. I promise we’ll come back to Plastigoop.
So, I recently found myself at the annual Oktoberfest celebration in my (current) hometown of Placerville. Promotional materials emphasize, and I quote, “the popular Dachshund Dash, a Bavarian costume contest, a giant zucchini contest, and men’s and ladies’ stein-holding competitions.”
*Not really.
As tempting as giant zucchinis naturally are, I was looking for a pretzel. This turned out to be a surprisingly difficult task, given I was at a friggin’ Oktoberfest. The realty office on Main Street was handing out these pretzels necklaces, but I was looking for Bavarian soft pretzels, dammit!
And then, manifested before mine eyes, I spotted my quarry. It lay on a vendor’s table alongside jars of jam and was sealed in a plastic bag, but I was assured it was fresh-baked. It was being offered by a place called Harris Family Farm, in nearby Pollock Pines (pop: 7,100), which sits on the original Pony Express Trail.
Anyway, the Harris folks were game for a special Oktoberfest offering, and so they were selling these pretzels. Twelve bucks seemed a little steep for a bagged, take-out pretzel, but it comes with a plastic container of beer cheese, and in any event you have to expect to pay more at a street fair like this where the vendors first need to cover the cost of getting the table and a permit and maybe a little local graft.
So I took my pretzel (“the ribbon is so you can wear it around your neck!” explained the young lady in a Dirndl who sold it to me) to a decorative wine barrel that served as a table, and got to work.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I feel obliged to classify this as this as the worst Bavarian pretzel I’ve experienced. My main complaint is that it was just too bready. It had the consistency of an Olive Garden breadstick. Based on my extensive experience of making pretzels once, I suspect that the Harris Family Farm pretzel is simply baked, eschewing the crucial step of boiling in baking soda (or lye). This would also explain the lack of gloss and the washed-out color. Now, to be fair, the salt distribution was spot-on, and the bread (qua bread) was tasty enough. It just wasn’t a pretzel.
But now let’s talk about the beer cheese. Or, as the young lady from Harris Family Farm called it, “cheese.” As every schoolchild knows, beer cheese is a magical substance made from a tangy cheese (usually sharp cheddar) and beer. The result is a wondrous dipping sauce that nicely compliments the malty, yeasty, chewy pretzel. Clearly this is not what accompanied my pretzel.
The stuff I received looked more like Velveeta than anything else. I dipped a hunk of my so-called pretzel in it and took a taste. Plastigoop. Seriously. This tasted exactly like orangish plastigoop (or at least my memory of it). It had a similar consistency as well.
Friends, I think we can all agree that half the point of enjoying a Bavarian pretzel is coating each bite in some warm, tangy, creamy beer cheese. As the old saying goes, “A pretzel without beer cheese is like a horse without rear knees.”
So I’m going to have to rate this pretzel experience as one star. That one star was earned strictly by the appearance of the pretzel, with its festive blue lanyard, good size, and optimal salt distribution. But its lack of pretzel taste and lack of authentic beer cheese prevent it from getting any further stars.
Let’s hope tomorrow is better!
PRETZEL TRIVIA
The average American consumes about two pounds of pretzels each year. Clearly I’m carrying the water for several non-pretzel-eating Americans…
