Soft Pretzels Recipe
By Aimee on
When my best friend came over from Perth recently we decided to do a little bit of baking. Now we’ve both never made pretzels before and thought how hard can this be? Turns out, its actually not so bad but we had to alter the recipe we were using a little bit do make it work for us.
I grew up in the Adelaide hills living close to the German town of Hahndorf where with every meal you eat yourselves full of bratwurst and tasty as soft salty pretzels and on the day we decided what to bake I had a hankering for these Hahndorf pretzels, and I’ve got to say ours turned out pretty close. We did a few different flavours and sizes as we wanted to try a few things. So we made some large salami and cheese ones, some smaller rosemary and sea salt and some basic salted ones as well. So without further ado here is our slightly modified recipe for our pretzels.
Ingredients:
- 2 1⁄4 tsp active dry yeast (1 standard packet)
- 1 cup warm water
- 5 tbs salted butter, melted
- 1 tsp sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- 3 cups all-purpose flour + up to 3⁄4 cup more if needed
- 2 Cups of water
4 tbs baking soda
OPTIONAL TOPPINGS
Cheddar Cheese, Grated
Salami
Rosemary
Coarse Salt
Method:
Combine yeast with warm water and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the hook attachment. Mixture should become ‘frothy’, this means your yeast is ready.
Stir in the salt and melted butter then add the flour 1 cup at a time until a dough forms and is no longer sticky. You may not use all your flour. It is ready to knead once the dough bounces back after you pressing your finger into it. Knead the dough for approximately five more minutes until it is smooth and pliable. Form dough back into a ball and place it back in the bowl to rest for 15 minutes
Preheat oven to 250℃ (475℉)
While it rises prepare your baking soda bath. In a medium sized pot, boil the 2 cups of water with the 4tbs of baking soda. Once the baking soda is almost dissolved take the mixture off the heat and allow it to cool down to a lukewarm temperature. Poor into a medium sized baking dish (We used a larger pot and saved on dishes)
Dough should now have risen. Take the dough out of the bowl and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand. Cut dough into 4-8 sections (depending on what size pretzels you want). Roll each section into long a long rope, shape dough into pretzel shape and place in backing soda bath for 2 minutes. If the whole pretzel isn’t covered by the water, spoon it on top of the areas it doesn’t reach. Once the two minutes is up, carefully pick up the pretzel with your hand and place on baking sheet.
Once they are on the baking sheet then you add your flavours. We made a few large ones that we put cheese and salami on. A few with rosemary and sea salt, and a few with just salt.
Bake the pretzels for 8-9 minutes or until golden brown and enjoy! They taste best straight out of the oven but can be stored for a few days.
So there you have it! As you can see my bestie and I had a great time making them and eating them. Couldn’t have had more fun!