A Happy Pretzel Weekend!

This past St. Paddy's weekend, I was itching to play around in the kitchen and decided on making pretzels. Since I started baking bread at home, I've been totally addicted to baking with yeast. There's something so inherently earthy and rewarding when you see the dough doubling or even tripling in size. My first bread-baking attempt was a total failure because I used water that's waaay to hot, thus killing the poor yeast. However, since then, I've learned my lesson and have gotten the hang of feeling for the right water temperature.

My previous forays into the world of yeast include a cheddar jalapeno bread (from the March issue of Gourmet) and pizza dough. I'm also a sucker for those Auntie Anne pretzels you see in virtually every shopping mall. At about $3 a pop, it's pretty expensive for baked twisted bread dough! Occasionally, the delicious smell seduces me to stand in line and shell out a few bucks for the soft, pillowy snack.

Feeling adventurous, I searched for the perfect pretzel recipe and found it on allrecipes.com. Since these buttery soft pretzels got good reviews and had helpful reviewer tips, I thought it would be the perfect virgin pretzel recipe.

As with most bread recipes, this pretzel recipe starts out with proofing of the yeast with some sugar and warm water for about 10 minutes until it is frothy and bubbling with life!


The yeast mixture is then added to the dry ingredients in a big mixing bowl before it is all kneaded with the dough hook until it forms a dough.




It is then kneaded for another 7-8 minutes until it is elastic and smooth.


The dough is then placed in a bowl before it is coated with some oil, covered with plastic wrap and left to rise for an hour in a draft-free environment.


Voila! The dough has about doubled in a mere hour! This is my favorite part of baking with yeast. It's like magic!


I turned the beautiful dough onto a lightly-floured surface and divvied it up into 12 about-equal dough portions.



Each dough portion is then rolled by hand until it is about 12 inches long, before it is twisted into a pretzel shape. Constantly flouring the kitchen surface and hands helps with the rolling.



My dough rolling and pretzel shaping got better with practice. The first few were quite pudgy and fat, with the last few more stringy and shapely. I personally prefer stringier pretzels that are not as dense.



Now comes the special step unique to pretzel baking: the base bath. Traditionally (or if you're a hard core pretzel baker), lye is used to coat the pretzels before it is baked in the oven. Lye, being a caustic base, has to be handled with gloves carefully. The strong base reacts with the gluten on the pretzel surface, pre-cooking it and allowing it to caramelize in the oven to give it that special pretzel texture. Although I have access to lye in the lab and more gloves than I'll ever need, I'm not about to turn my kitchen into a danger zone or risk needing to call for emergency services, so I substituted it with the recommended baking soda dissolved in hot water.


I then let the pretzels swim in this wonderful basic bath for about 30 seconds before fishing each of them out with a Chinese-style strainer.



They are then lined on a silicone or parchment-lined sheet before a generous sprinkling of coarse salt and/or other toppings of your choice (my favorite is sesame seeds). Lining the pan with either a silicone mat or parchment paper is uber important. One of the sides of my pretzels touched the side of the baking pan and was super difficult to remove. I ended up tearing the pretzel and had to soak the pan overnight so I could scrub off the sticky stuff. I'm guessing that the baking soda-soaked surface reacts with metal to stick!


This is what the first batch turned out to be like: nicely-browned and delicious. I think it was a little bit overbaked although I followed the recipe's recommended 8 minutes. The first batch didn't turn out to be as chewy as I desired.



So I baked the second batch for one minute less than the recommended time and they turned out beautiful! They were less brown but chewier and more "mall pretzel-like".


It was a ton of fun making these at home. The pretzels didn't turn out to be exactly like Auntie Annie's because I think they might've glazed theirs with either butter or an egg/water glaze before baking, something I will try out in the future. The pretzels were still very yummy (my roommate finished 4 of them with his beer before I could let them cool completely to freeze). Besides underbaking them slightly and glazing them, I will also definitely try out more adventurous toppings like garlic parmesan, cinammon sugar and black sesame!

HI,

Thanks for the virtual cooking class!

I'd never seen a pretzle with sesame seeds, which is what you can get away with making it yourself!

Thanks!

Regards,

Wow, your pretzels look great! I had made a batch (my first attempt) a couple months ago that didn't turn out nearly as good as yours look.

To clarify, do you boil them in the base bath or just soak them? My recipe called (at least it is how I read it) for boiling them, which seemed to disintegrate them a bit, leaving a mushy bottom. Looks like you just soaked them in hot water, which might have been my downfall.

Either way congrats, they look great!

Jamie

BTW:
Have you tried bagels yet? Might want to out that in the batter's box since you are on a yeast kick!

Hey there!

I only soaked the pretzels in a rather warm solution of water with baking soda. I dissolved the baking soda in water that's almost boiling (but NOT boiling yet) before I handled the risen dough. Then I removed it from the heat and left it alone until it's time for the babies to swim in it. So the baking soda bath was still warm but not super hot anymore by the time I dipped the pretzels in it.

Hope this helps! And yes! I was thinking of either bagels or cinnamon buns for my next yeast project

I will have to give pretzels another shot with a better recipe.

Did your pretzels get flipped over after forming? Your "ends" are stuck on the underside not the top, which I have never seen. Just commenting because the section where the end meets the lower curve of the pretzel is the greatest section of snack food ever created since it is crunchy on top and extra thick and soft underneath!!! Honestly the only thing that rivals it is a burnt Cheez-It

Jamie

Oh, are the ends supposed to be on top? For some reason, I thought the ends are supposed to be hidden under the pretzel curve... my bad!

I recently made pretzels a few weeks ago with a healthier spin - Honey Wheat Apple Cinnamon with whole wheat flour. Because I used applesauce, the dough was a bit denser (thus came out flatter) than the traditional pretzel, but good nonetheless.

Some pretzel flavors I plan on trying in the future include:

Berry mix w/ cream cheese filling
Italian cheese & garlic
Mexican jalepeno & cheddar
Spinach & feta
Bacon & cheese
Honey wheat

Pics and recipes are in my blog link below.
http://joelens.blogspot.com/2007/02/pre ... nyone.html[/url]