Want to bake the best homemade soft pretzels ever? Check out this simple yet amazing recipe and if I can bake it so can you.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon yeast (I used active dry yeast)
- 1 and 1/2 cups lukewarm water
- 4 and 1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 cup lukewarm milk
- 1/4 cup (approx) melted butter for brushing
- 4 tablespoons baking soda
Instructions
- In a large bowl, stir together the warm water with yeast, for the yeast to dissolve and set it aside.
- In another large bowl, mix the salt, sugar and 4 and 1/2 cups of flour (usually start with the lowest range given and then add more if required)
- Now add the flour mixture and warm milk to the dissolved yeast mixture. Lightly beat it with an electric hand held beater for a minute until it all comes together a bit. I’m thinking you can simply use a wooden spoon or spatula itself for this task.
- The dough felt a bit wet and sticky so I added more flour in small increments and it was about 1/4 cup of flour in total. At this point I was using only the wooden spoon to mix the dough because I didn’t want to get tough pretzels by over-working the dough using a hand-held mixer. Surprisingly just using a wooden spoon was not at all an issue because the dough came together perfectly. At the end I did oil my hand a little bit and used my fingers to make the dough into a big ball and gave few punches.
- Now grease a large bowl generously with oil (I used avocado oil but use any oil of your choice), place the dough in it and cover it with a damp towel, for the dough to rise until its double in size. This may take up-to an hour depending on the temperature.
- It was a cold day so I kept the bowl in the microwave oven with the light on so that the heat from the bulb would help with the rising of the dough. Another thing to note here is, with yeasted dough, when a recipe says one hour for the dough to double in size do not stick to the time but check for the size.
- Sometimes it might take more than an hour for the dough to double. So by the end of one hour if the dough hasn’t doubled wait for it to happen. Do not start the baking process yet because you may end up getting hard bread.
- Once the dough has doubled, punch down the dough and divide it into 9 pieces.
- Take each piece and roll it into a long rope, about 3 to 4 feet and shape it into a pretzel shape and place them onto a greased cookie sheet and let them rise again for about 15 minutes. While you are working with each piece make sure that the remaining pieces of dough stays covered and so is the dough which is shaped into pretzels too, to prevent drying.
- Meanwhile preheat oven to 500F/260C for about 15 minutes.
- Also in a large pot prepare a bath with baking soda and boiling water (about 5 cups of water probably).
- Use a large spoon/spatula to lower each pretzel into the water and leave in for about 30 seconds to a minute. The remove it using a slotted spoon to drain the water and place it on the cookie sheet and brush it with melted butter and sprinkle sea salt on top. My pretzels didn’t remain in shape when I took it out of the bath and that’s when I had to reshape them into simple circles and proceed with the process.
- Bake the pretzels until golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Take them out of the oven and brush it again with melted butter and serve warm with the dip of your choice.
