Like bagels, pretzels are boiled before baking. The key is adding baking soda to the water, which gives pretzels their distinctive flavor and brown, glossy crust. The recipe here produces perfectly chewy pretzels with dark, burnished exteriors. If you like your soft pretzels to have a little more crunch on the outside but remain tender and chewy in the middle, just lower the oven temperature and bake for a little longer. Serving these without a little mustard for dipping is heretical.

Chocolate babka is one of the culinary wonders of the Eastern European Jewish tradition. It’s a rich, eggy, buttery loaf with generous swirls of chocolate, and once you’ve had it, it’s the kind of bread that instills lifelong cravings.