Recipe courtesy of Gale Gand

Soft Pretzels

  • Level: Intermediate
  • Yield: 20 servings
  • Total: 50 min
  • Prep: 30 min
  • Cook: 20 min
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Ingredients

2 tablespoons warm water, plus 1 1/3 cups warm water

1 package dry yeast

1/3 cup brown sugar

5 cups flour

1/2 cup baking soda

Kosher salt

Mustard, as an accompaniment

Directions

  1. In a large mixing bowl, mix 2 tablespoons warm water with the yeast to dissolve it. Then stir in the remaining warm water and brown sugar. Place bowl on a mixer and using a dough hook, gradually add the flour and continue mixing until it forms a ball. Turn it out onto a work surface and knead the dough to make it smooth. Use enough flour on your work surface so the dough is not sticky.
  2. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
  3. Butter 2 sheet pans. Bring 2 quarts of water and the baking soda to boil in a large saucepan. Cut dough up into golf ball size pieces. Then roll them into 1/2-inch thick worms. Form a U then cross the ends, twisting at the middle. Fold the ends back down to meet the U (which is now an O) and press to secure the dough. Drop it into the boiling water for 30 seconds then fish it out and place it on the greased sheet pan. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Bake for 8 minutes or until golden brown.

Let's Get Cooking!

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Eva_C

Need to rise first! We made these tonight. We let the dough rise for about 1.5 hours before punching down and following the rest of the directions. They took an extra two minutes to bake (10 minutes total) even though I made them smaller and shaped like bagels. The flavor was a nice soft pretzel evenly distributed yeast to flour. I shaped them while my roommate boiled and baked. We let a few rise a few minutes on the plate before baking. Those were better and more fluffy. If we did them right away they were flat. Be sure the water it boiling and flip the pretzels in the water. Be sure to grease the baking pan. We forgot to butter the pan on one batch and they stuck badly. We tried adding some flavors to ours and made plain, salted, chocolate chip and brown sugar. Salt was still the best. Brown sugar was just okay.

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