Soft Pretzels

This pretzel recipe is amazing. I was amazed by how much these pretzels truly taste, look and feel like traditional soft pretzels.

I read many online sources on pretzels and many said it was worth it to use the lye solution (hence the darker color of my pictures vs. the book), so I decided to buy it off the internet and be VERY careful. The lye solution I used for the whole recipe was 21 grams per 2 cups of water and since I was using a fairly big saucepan, I needed 8 cups of water.

I don't really have any complaints about this recipe or the final result, but I would caution other bakers that this recipe is time consuming (BUT FUN!) and quite difficult to achieve the desired result. The dough is very elastic, so it is very difficult to shape a very large pretzel without it snapping back to a smaller size.

Also, my oven to 400 degrees F (like the recipe says) produced difficult results. The recipe states to bake "until the pretzels are a rich brown". The pretzels were very brown after the first 8 minutes, so i decided to take them out before the end of the 2nd 8 to 10 minutes (after 4 minutes), but they were underdone and still raw in the middle. I had to bake them for the full 16 minutes (8 on each rotation) to ensure they were baked all the way through, but the result was very brown pretzels, but they still tasted VERY GOOD! I should note the amount of time the pretzels soaked in the lye solution was not stated in the recipe, so I used other online sources that said 15 seconds. The lye solution could have been the reason why they were so brown so early. Next time I will try them while only dipping them to coat in the lye solution.

We love soft pretzels, especially in winter evenings. I have a favorite recipe for soft pretzels. They are super good but seem to take a lot of steps. The biggest bother is cooking them in soda water before baking. I thought soft pretzels just needed this extra step and didn't think to eliminate it.

But the soft pretzel recipe in "Artisan Breads Every Day" is much simpler. After forming the pretzels, they are dipped in warm water which contains soda dissolved in it and immediately baked.

Like most of the recipes in this book, this one calls for an overnight rise in the fridge. A great step to get most of the preparation done ahead of time - but bad for spur of the moment "I'm hungry for soft pretzels." Peter claims the delayed fermentation enhances the flavor and these pretzels were definitely yummy!

As usual, I added some whole wheat flour. We actually prefer the flavor of whole wheat. I replaced 2 cups of white flour with whole wheat, added 2 T vital gluten and increased the water by 1/4 cup.

I love how puffy these pretzels are. Unlike my other recipe, the leftovers were tasty the next day. My daughter turned pretzel making into some letter practice! We'll be making this recipe again!

These are REALLY good! The dough was easy to portion and made about 17 2-ounce pretzels. I found that I had to let the dough rest for quite a bit while rolling it out in order to get the 17 inch strands that the book suggests. I rolled out some, let them rest, started others and then went back to the first ones. I am glad I did. The strands that were longer and thinner made pretzels that had better-defined holes in them. Otherwise, they baked up into a mass with no holes. They still tasted good but didn't have the thinner pretzel look which I like.