Well, the solution to this probably not very common problem is
store-bought pizza dough. While I don’t necessarily recommend it for making
world-class pizza, if you’re willing to eat something that looks like a bagel,
it works very well for making pretzels.
Normally, I would’ve done that before writing the post, but did
I mention the pretzels and beer? Like I said in the video, if you do want to make
your own pretzel dough, go for it, since the technique will work the same no
matter where you’re dough comes from. Regardless of what you use, I really hope
you give these a try soon. Enjoy!
Ingredients for 6 homemade soft pretzels:
1 pound prepared pizza dough, plus all-purpose flour as
needed, divided into six balls
6 cups water
1/3 cup baking soda
coarse salt
- Bake at 400 F. for about 20 minutes, or until beautifully
browned, and stretch marks have formed. Exact times will depend the specific
size and shape of your pretzel.
- Tip: if you’re
making rings, be sure to stretch them out, so your pretzels are not too thick.
You don’t want them any fatter than I made, otherwise they become too bready.
Larger, thinner dough rings we’ll give you a chewier pretzel, closer to the
ones you get at the mall.
15 comments:
Do you think it would work to double up on the Oktoberfest theme by using the dough from your beer bread recipe as the dough for these pretzels? Asking for a friend.
Those look amazing! I will definitely try them out, perhaps with a few personal additions!
After having seen you make gravlax (or gravlox as Americans like to call it, no clue why, since lax=salmon in swedish) I would love to know your opinion on another swedish classic called Janssons Frestelse (basically Janssons Temptation). Janssons Temptation is a kind of potato gratin which features anchovies. I really think you'd enjoy it and would love to see your take on it!
Thank you for all your videos, they give me great inspiration.
Sincerely
Erik Larsson from Sweden
Hey Chef John
thanks for all your amazing recipes. I m following your Blog since years. I only have one tiny complain (: in Germany nobody is eating mustard on a pretzel, Mustard is for the sausages. Try your Pretzels with god butter that is the way we Germans are doing it. Keep on your fantastic work, I m looking forward to the next recipes.
Cheers
This looks amazing! Where can we leave our food wishes for you? Can we just post them in the comments? If so, I would loooove to see how you make chicago style deep dish pizza!
waooo very nice post about Pizza Dough Pretzels.
Thanks,
Gold Tips Free Trial
I tried these tonight with my homemade pizza dough. They're very good but I prefer lye to baking soda as the pretzels come out crustier.
Man these look good. As a German I never dared make pretzels (or Brezeln, as they are known over here) because of the lye but never thought of baking soda so thanks for that tweak! By the way, my countryman is right about the mustard but when I saw it I thought "well, at least it's not ketchup"... :-) Apart from butter, in some areas they like to dip their pretzels into cheese spreads so that's another option if you do want to go semi-authentic. But in the end, who cares as long as you like it?
For another and pretty exotic bread-based recipe, may I suggest the Ethiopian injera flatbread - I'd love to know a substitute for the teff flour which is tricky to come by. You could do a double combo with one of their awesome stews and get your week's work done in one cooking event. Now how is that for efficiency?
All the best from Krautland,
D
^^^Mmmmm...God butter.
Chef John, they sell little bottles of Lye Water at my local Asian grocery store. Would it be ok to pour a bottle of that into the water instead of the baking soda, or would it be too dangerous?
Food grade lye microbeads are perfectly safe and available online.
I wear disposable plastic gloves to protect against any splashes.
I tried these and they are pretty darn good. I even had to buy some frozen pizza dough to do the recipe. Next time i make pizza I'll save a bit of my homemade dough to try.
This would be a fun recipe for kids to make. Depending on the age they might need help with the hot water part.
Football season is just the right time for these.
Hello Chef John,
In the country where Pretzels come from we use the word Betzel for the shape, i.e,, a knot, rather than the peraration of the dough with lye. We have lye rolls, sticks, rings or even croissants and wouldn't call them Bretzel. On the other hand we make Bretzels from sweet yeast dough or flaky pastry. Here is an example of a particularly elaborate New Years Bretzel: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JqJ_q4cLE4A
I am on a Food Wishes binge this weekend. The chicken ala king was great. Went old-school and served it on toast like Grandma used to do.
The pretzels; I wonder if a saltwater wash would give them a nice, shiny, salty crust. What do you think? They taste amazing. Eating one as I type this.
I made these with pizza dough i made in my breadmaker, turned out really well!
Might try making sausage shaped ones and injecting mustard or chocolate into the finished product next time :)
I cannot believe how great these are. I've made them twice...first time as written with store bought dough, second time with homemade pizza dough and made a bit smaller. One of the few things everyone in my picky eater family loves. What a wonderful quick treat...!!
Lye is quite dangerous for a typical home chef. Baking soda is obviously much safer but someone less effective. You can increase the alkali of baking soda for baking it on a piece of foil at 250-300F for 1 hour.
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