Health Food Focus: A Pletzel For Your Thoughts

This Is A Pletzel

Let me answer your question right away. A “pletzel” is also known as an onion flat or onion board. It’s a simple food that satisfies the FDA’s nutritional requirements for dough, onions and poppy seeds.

“The heart of Jewish Paris is the Pletzel, a Yiddish name for the old 13^th century Jewish quarter found in the Marais district.” – Jewish Virtual Library¹

I used this recipe – John Barrymore Onion Pletzel – to create this pletzel. Since baking is not my strong suit, I used the the Goldilocks method. It took three attempts for me to get it just right. However, this recipe can be very forgiving. Even an ADHDer should be able to make something that tastes good the very first time.

Ingredients

• 1 pound dough – I used store-bought pizza dough (see the original recipe for their recommendation for the dough)
• Olive oil, vegetable oil or melted butter
• 1 small onion, thinly sliced
• Poppy seeds
• Salt

Note: The original recipe provides measurements for the olive oil, poppy seeds and salt. However, this is the type of food where you just sprinkle enough of an ingredient until it seems just right (remember…think Goldilocks).

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350° and prepare a baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment. (Baking parchment works fine.)²
• Take your 1 pound ball of dough and sprinkle it with flour, along with the work surface.
• Roll it out to a 1/2 inch thick rectangle. Place the dough on the prepared baking sheet and let it rise for about 20 minutes while you prepare the onions.
• Sauté the onions in the oil over medium heat until very lightly browned (a cast-iron pan works beautifully). If they are overbrown they will burn in the oven.
• Cover the dough evenly with the onions. Sprinkle the poppy seeds over the onions, then the salt and drizzle with more oil or butter.
• Bake the pletzel for 15-25 minutes, depending on the thickness of the dough. (My experience has been that it needs at least 20 minutes.)

Pletzel prepped and ready for the oven

Checking the pletzel for doneness by lifting it up and looking underneath

The Pletzel Masterpiece

For those that are religious, I have provided this prayer to be said over the pletzel.

Blessing Over The Pletzel

1. Here are some pictures of the Pletzel neighborhood. It should be no surprise that there is a Parisian Pletzel.↩
2. This was the first time I used parchment paper and it will now become an integral part of my baking. I will probably try it with my banana chocolate turnovers. What I found was that the usual uneven heating problem of using a regular baking sheet somehow disappeared when using the parchment paper. The bottom of the pizza dough heated fairly evenly and had a wonderful crispiness to it.↩

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