Soft Pretzels

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The Short Story

  1. The baking soda soak is essential if you want these to be pretzels. If you skip it, you’ll have delicious fluffy bread, but it won’t have that pretzel taste.
  2. Don’t lose your mind over shaping the pretzels, they’ll still be delicious.
  3. Bread flour is essential here for a soft, chewy pretzel.

The Longer Story

  1. The baking soda soak is a pain, I get it. But it really is the difference between plain bread and pretzels. If you want to change the amount of water you use for a smaller pot, the ratio is 9 grams of baking soda for every 1 cup of water.
  2. Rolling out and shaping 12 pretzels can be a bit of a workout, and I used to take forever trying to make them perfect. It can be really hard to get the dough to roll out. Don’t worry about it, just roll out the dough until you can make enough of a pretzel shape that it works.
  3. Bread flour has a higher protein content, meaning your pretzels will be much chewier and a better soft-pretzel texture! You can find bread flour at any grocery store.

Soft Pretzels

Recipe originally from Erin Jeanne McDowell

Ingredients

Dough:

  • 660g (5½ cups) bread flour
  • 25g (2 tablespoons) granulated sugar
  • 9g (1 tablespoon) instant dry yeast
  • 12 g (2 teaspoons) kosher salt
  • 56g (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 340g (1½ cups) warm water (about 110°F)

Finishing

  • 12 cups (3 quarts) water
  •  107g (6½ tablespoons) baking soda
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon water
  • coarse or flaky salt
  • 198g (1 cup) granulated sugar (only for cinnamon sugar pretzels)
  • 13g (1½ tablespoons) ground cinnamon (only for cinnamon sugar pretzels)

Instructions

  1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, stir the flour, sugar, yeast, and salt until combined.
  2. Add the butter and water. Using the dough hook, mix on low for about 3 minutes until the dough comes together. Increase the speed to medium and mix for about 4 more minutes, until the dough is very smooth and stretchy.
  3. Transfer dough to a greased bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let rise until the dough is almost doubled (about 1-1½ hours).
  4. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces, about 85g each. Cover the pieces you’re not working with so that they don’t dry out.
  5.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll the piece of dough until it’s about 20 inches long (or long enough to make a pretzel shape). To make the pretzel shape, bring the ends of the log of dough together, twist the ends together twice, then fold the twisted ends over the loop so that the ends of the dough touch the edges of the loop. Press the ends into the loop so that the dough sticks together.
  6. Repeat above shaping process with each piece of dough, placing each pretzel on one of the baking sheets when it’s done (6 pretzels on each baking sheet). Keep the pretzels covered with plastic wrap after they’re shaped so they don’t dry out.
  7. After pretzels are shaped, keep them covered with the plastic wrap and let rise until pretzels are noticeably puffy, about 30-45 minutes. I start the timer on the rising time when one pan of pretzels are done so that they can be rising while I shape the second pan of pretzels.
  8. While pretzels are rising, prepare the baking soda mixture and the egg wash. For the baking soda mixture, bring the water to a boil, then turn the heat to low and add the baking soda. Keep the pot of water on the stove on low heat while you soak the pretzels. For the egg wash, whisk the egg and tablespoon of water together until well combined.
  9. Preheat the oven to 425°F.
  10. Working with 2-3 pretzels at a time, add the pretzels to the baking soda mixture. Let the pretzels soak for about 30 seconds, flip them over with a spider or slotted spoon, and let them soak for 30 seconds more. Remove the pretzels with the slotted spoon (I like to pat the spoon on a paper towel to get some of the water off), and return the pretzels to the baking sheets.
  11. Egg wash the pretzels, then sprinkle with flaky salt. For cinnamon-sugar pretzels, sprinkle less salt then normal, then lightly dust each pretzel with cinnamon sugar (made by combining the sugar and cinnamon with a fork or whisk).
  12. Bake until pretzels are deeply golden brown, and the interior temperature of the thickest part of the pretzels is at least 195°F. About 12-15 minutes.
  13. For cinnamon sugar pretzels, brush with melted butter right when they’re out of the oven, and sprinkle more cinnamon sugar on top. For all pretzels, allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving.