Snack Review: Bachman Pretzel Rods
Here’s what’s remarkable about pretzels: They basically have only, what, four ingredients? Flour, water, yeast, salt. There may be little bits of other things like fat and sweetener. But how can they be so different when that’s all there is to it?
I guess it’s not too surprising, because that’s all there is to bread, also, and bread can be very different with just those ingredients even before you start adding fancy stuff to it. Not surprising, but inconvenient, because in my house, there is only one kind of acceptable pretzel rod - and it’s a brand we can’t find where we live now.
Our favorite is Bachman’s. We bought a stash of them on a recent trip up north, and found that the bag now makes a big deal out of their difference: They’re Rolled! Um, WTF?
From the website:
New Design… Same Great Pretzels! We make our signature Original Rolled Rods the old-fashioned way—by rolling them! We’ve been doing that for over 120 years, first by hand as our founder J.S. Bachman did, and now by a special method created and developed at our historic Heritage Center Bakery. Our exclusive Brick Oven Flame Baked process ensures our products are exceptionally crisp and crunchy giving them the unique Bachman taste advantage.
Yeah, right, Heritage Center Bakery. I’m thinking that these are made in a really big factory, and it’s silly to try to pretend otherwise. But I forgive them because, despite the change in the packaging and hype, thank goodness, the pretzels are still the same. “Exceptionally crunchy” is right - don’t buy these if you have lazy jaws, and they are dry as heck - you might want to have a glass of water handy.
But I mean that in the nicest possible way: that’s what we like about them. All the other brands are wimpy, just crumbling in your mouth with hardly any resistance. These are crunchy, and have a nice simple flavor without anything weird about it - as you ought to get from a snack that is based on those simple things, flour and water and salt and yeast. They usually have just the right amount of salt on them, for my taste.
And, fortunately, they are exactly the same as they used to be, and you can’t say that about many things. Thank you, Bachman - your PR is silly but thank you for not changing my favorite pretzels - and sparing the Internet another of my rants about the lost good old days!
Jim on January 19th, 2009
Is it true that Bachman is a pseudonym for King?