For the hell of it, I decided to make soft pretzels last night. I made one pretzel dough with two topping variations, salt and cinnamon/sugar. The salty variety came out much better than the cinnamon and sugar.
I used Fleur de Sel for the salt, which came out nicely.
However for the cin/sug mixture I used standard C&H white and mass production ground cinnamon. I have given up C&H recently and switched to Zulka, but the mixture was left over from a batch of snickerdoodles. Zulka is a more coarse grain Mexican cane sugar and usually .02 - .04 cents cheaper per ounce. But I digress.
The recipe for the dough came out nice and chewy with right flavor. That recipe is as follows:
- 2 tsp Instant Yeast
- 1 1/2 cup Water
- 1/3 cup Dark Brown Sugar
- 4 1/2 cups AP Flour
- Pinch Salt
- Baking Soda
- Boiling water
Reserve the Boiling water and baking soda.
In this order add the dough ingredients to your mixer (hook attachment).
- water
- flour
- sugar
- salt
- yeast
Mix ingredients until they form a ball. Continue mixing on medium speed until the ball of dough is smooth and elastic, approximately three minutes.
Let dough stand and rise for thirty minutes. Punch down dough and let rise again for thirty more minutes.
Punch down dough for last time and begin forming pretzel shapes. I used a 2.75 ounce scoop to portion my dough before rolling. That size makes a decent four bite pretzel.
When you have your portions, roll the balls into long, thick pencil shapes. Pick up both ends and cross them to form the pretzel. (If you are making a larger pretzel, you will need to twist the two ends over one another before finishing your shape. This will ensure the shapes integrity through baking and eventually eating.)
Bring a pot of water to a boil and add a handful of baking soda to the pot. Watch out for bubble up when you add it. Let this simmer until the pretzels shapes are ready.
Bring water mixture to a full boil. Preheat oven to 475° F.
Place pretzel shapes one at a time in boiling water. The pretzel will develop a yellowish color and float. Remove the pretzel from boiling water and place onto a parchment lined sheet pan.
Top the wet pretzels with your topping and place into the oven for six to eight minutes.
Pretzels are done when golden brown.
Enjoy. (and yes, boiling along with a decent dough is the key to a good pretzel)
I use a different pretzel recipe, but still love making soft pretzels. One question, though. How the HECK did you keep the parchment from burning? I made a heck of a mess when I did that and forgot that paper burns at 451°F and the oven was set for 475°F. I've switched to using baking stones now.
ReplyDeleteAlso, where might one find this better quality sugar? I am intrigued!
The consumer grade parchment has a different coating than professional grade coating. The average home variety seems to smoke rather quickly. When making these at home I use foil and pan release spray; at work, parchment. The short cooking time only allows the parchment to turn golden. Also, there are high temperature liners available for home use through King Aurthur. However, using a stone would be ideal with either a bit of corn meal for easy release or salt. The wet pretzel, I believe, would adhere itself rather aggressively to a hot tile without something under it.
ReplyDeleteIn Arizona there are always terracotta tiles available at the local Home Depot for use as baking stones. A box of ten tiles would cost you $10 or cheaper. I always used those at my restaurant for making pizzas or any stone baking application, using corn meal for the releasing agent. Those tiles would have a tendency to split and crack after a couple days of use, but you would always find a few more resilient stones in your lot which would outlast the rest.
As for Zulka, you can find it at Safeway or even at uber Walmart. It comes in a plastic bag, one to four pounds, and is usually in the same area as raw or turbinado sugar. So far I have not
Ah. The difference in coatings makes sense. Mine didn't actually ignite but it turned black around the edges and smoked up the whole house. I'll have to try the corn meal on the baking stones next time. They do stick a bit, but wind up coming off fairly easily with a spatula. Thanks for the tips!
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