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)
