Soft Pretzel

 Intermediate kitchen skills - takes about 2 hours.  

Ingredients

2 ½ - 4 cups of flour

1 cup of water at 100 degrees

2 ½  tsps of active dry yeast or instant yeast

2 tbsps of honey

2 tbsps of melted butter (you can use oil or vegan butter too)

1 tsp of salt

¼ cup of baking soda

8 cups of water

Egg & Water for egg wash (optional)

Baking spray 

More melted butter 

Coarse sea salt for topping

Cooking Instructions

Heat the 1 cup of water - make sure it doesn't get too hot

Mix the honey, yeast and water and set aside for 5 minutes. 

Make sure your mixture looks foamy. That is how you know your yeast is good to go. (If it doesn't foam, your yeast may be expired or your water was too hot)

Using a stand mixer and dough hook or to get those muscles going, use a wooden spoon and mix in the flour, butter, honey starting with the smaller amount of flour. Start mixing, adding ½ cup more flour at a time until you have a not too sticky not too dry dough. You want it to be soft and plush.

If using a dough hook this will start to form a cohesive dough ball and won’t be sticking to the bottom or sides of the bowl. If using a wooden spoon I suggest mixing until you can easily take it out of the bowl and knead on a countertop. Knead about 5 minutes or until you can poke the dough and it starts to come back.

Oil the bowl you were using and the dough, and set aside to proof for 30 minutes. I cover loosely with plastic and then put a wet towel on top, and then use my oven's bread proof setting.

Or you can set it in the microwave. You want it to be in a nice warm and cozy environment.

While it is proving, you want to heat your oven to 400 degrees, and get your baking soda bath going.

Bring 8 cups of water to boil with the baking soda, using a dutch pot or stock pot, or really any pot but ideally you will want to fit 2-3 pretzels in at a time. 

Prepare 2 sheet trays with parchment and spray heavily with baking spray. If you don’t have baking spray you can heavily grease. This is important so the pretzel doesn't stick to the pan

Prepare your egg wash if using - 1 egg and a splash of water and whisk vigorously.

Once the 30 minutes is up punch and dump the dough onto a lightly floured work surface (LIGHTLY, if you use too much flour the dough will just slide around.)

Using a bench scraper, or knife cut the dough into 8 even pieces (you can weigh if you want them to all be exact or you can YOLO it, and just cut them)

Cover the other pieces with a wet paper towel or kitchen towel while you work with one piece of dough at a time, this way it won’t dry out while working. Once you get the hang of it you won’t need to. Using the palms of your hands gently roll the dough into a long rope, you don’t need to measure the thicker the rope is the fluffier and smaller it will be. The longer the rope the thinner and bigger it will be. Turn the rope into a U shape, twist the ends over each other and then bring to the front facing you. Take a look, does it look like a pretzel? 

Form the rest of the pretzels and then set them each on the baking tray. Once finished using a slotted spoon or strainer gently place 2-3 in the boiling baking soda water until they float to the top.

Gently take them out and set them back on the sheet tray. Once they have all been “bathed” egg wash them and sprinkle with coarse salt. If you don’t want to use eggs you can just sprinkle them with the salt, it will stick from the bath. The egg wash does help with the golden brown color, but most of that brown color comes from the baking soda bath!

Bake for 15-22 minutes depending on your oven, immediately brush them with melted butter and place on a cooling rack or devour them. Up to you!