First decide if you are going to make your pretzels on the same day or
you can wait and make them tomorrow. I prefer to let the dough sit overnight, as
it gains flavor and the dough has better texture.
If your going to make the pretzels the same day as the dough, make sure the water is warm,
about 100-105 degrees F if you are using regular dry active yeast, and bloom the yeast in the warm water.
If you are using instant yeast you can put it right into the flour.
(make sure your yeast is fresh)
Gather the rest of your ingredients together;
the
flour, brown sugar, salt, butter, yeast and water.
In this picture I have the yeast in the water already.
I am also showing in this picture the sourdough starter and the diastatic malt, optional
ingredients to optimize your dough, we will go over this option later.
First let's make the same day dough pretzels.
Blend all the ingredients together,
I like to use a dough whisk, for this. Somties the mixer doesn't get it all worked in evenly.
Let this sit for 15 min to let the water soak in before you knead it.
This is called letting the dough autolyze.
Knead the dough in the stand mixer with the dough hook, for about 5-8 minutes until the dough clears the bowl and gathers around the hook. If it doesn't add about 50 grams or 1/4 heaping cup of flour and that should do it.
Cover the dough and let it rise for about 30-45 min till about doubled in size.
Here I rolled them out about 25 grams or 1 oz of dough into a pencil thick 18 inches.
Many of you may find that even a thinner thickness even better.
This is about half the thickness of a pencil.
Cross the arms and bring them up to the top about 10 and 2
or what ever time you want. Som place them at 9 and 3.
Fill up the pan and chill for 2 hours in the fridge to dry the skin, and firm them up making them easier to dip.
Weigh out the sodium hydroxide and measure the water. |
Pour the water in a thick glass baking dish or a stainless steel pan first and then mix in the sodium hydroxide. Not the other way around, you don't want it too splash or make fumes.
Do not use thin glass dish or aluminum pan. |
Pre-Heat oven to 300-325 degrees
Using rubber gloves or a small stainless skimmer or this "Fish Spatula" dip the pretzels in the solution and put them back on the pan
and sprinkle them with Pretzel salt or a coarse salt.
I bake these at a low temperature depening on how hot your oven feels.
these need to be low and slow about an hour turning the pan at 30 min. Then shut off the oven test one,
for crunchiness. If they are still soft they need to bake another 15 -30 min.
Turn off the oven and let them sit in a cooling oven for another 30 to 60 min.
Enjoy these crispy pretzels, they keep for a long time in a plastic storage bag.
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