Thank you avid readers for your patience while I was spending time with family. I am now the proud aunt of a new nephew! Oliver John introduced himself to the world while I was visiting my sister, so baking time was limited. But I safely returned to Wisconsin, and baking :)
Last weekend I tested out homemade pretzels. I’ve never made pretzels. Fortunately, they turned out great and were so much easier than expected! They were intimidating, especially trying to figure out how to get the correct shape. We made it through to taste testing, and they were a success!
I realized there are multiple keys for success:
1. Make sure your dough rises.
2. Make sure your dough isn’t too “wet.”
3. Make sure you have baking soda in your boiling water to ensure fluffiness.
These three things make up a great pretzel! Granted I had some trial and error during this experiment, but we managed and ate some pretzels!
My dough rose amazingly, which shocked me! I am hit or miss with proper execution of rising dough. I was elated. Unfortunately, my dough was quite wet. I added flour 1 tbsp at a time as directed in the recipe (Half Baked Harvest again, I don’t lie when I say I’m obsessed). But I also had a time crunch, and my planning brain said make the dough, then go to your commitment, and while you are there, the dough will rise. Because of the time crunch, I only added a total of 2 tbsp of flour. I could’ve added 2-3 more. This ended up not being a huge deal, but the dough would have been much easier to work with if it had been a little drier. I wasn’t able to truly roll the dough as needed. I made do and managed fine.
Shaping the pretzels was easy enough once I watched a video. Much more intimidating to look at a completed pretzel shape than to actually shape them. Then came my second issue, again not a huge deal and I managed but another surprise. I waited to bake them. We had friends coming over, and I was hoping to serve some warm pretzels. Much to my surprise, while I waited to bake them, the pretzels, now in their great shapes, rose again! Not a huge deal, just like having slightly wet dough, but the good shapes I had worked so hard on were now gone. I ended up using the end of a spoon to hollow out the pretzel “windows” again. Then came the next key. Baking Soda in boiling water. I did a small test pretzel prior to baking the whole batch. Half Baked Harvest says a quick 30 second “boiling baking soda bath” is key to the fluffy pretzels. With the test pretzel, it worked great. I used fresh water for the rest of the batch. I didn’t want stale water, and I didn’t know if letting the water and baking soda cool a little would make a difference.
I boiled new water, put two pretzels in for 30 seconds and then put them in the oven, only to realize after two minutes that I never put the baking soda in. So of course I put it in late for the next five pretzel baths. Quite honestly, I didn’t notice too big of a difference. Maybe the no baking soda bath pretzels were less fluffy, but I can’t be sure. I enjoyed all the pretzels I ate!
Prior to baking you have to put a little egg wash on the dough with some sea salt. The egg wash provides that nice golden color, and the salt provides, well salt. Typical dips are cheese and honey mustard, maybe ranch. We used Chick-fil-A sauce. Wow, it was the perfect compliment to the pretzels. Half Baked Harvest has a honey mustard recipe, which I’m sure would be amazing, but I can’t go back now.
Comments