Pretzel Time?

This last Sunday my hubby made a suggestion to me: that I make something I hadn't made in, oh, several months at least.  SO, breaking from my usual habit of making or baking some sort of sweet over the weekend, I made homemade pretzels; a favorite of ours.  I make them every Christmas at least, but usually more often than that.  It's a nice break from sweet baked treats (although I do love sweets...).

The first time or two that I made homemade pretzels, it was SUPER time consuming, because I was learning as I went along off of a basic recipe I found in a book.  I've since adopted the following recipe: Buttery Soft Pretzels, courtesy of user Christa Rose on Allrecipes.com  I'm going to lay out for you exactly how to make these guys; hopefully you'll give it a try, because they're DELICIOUS!

First things first, assemble the ingredients, and make sure you have a large, very clean 

workspace cleared off for when you need to work with the dough.  This is one recipe where it's helpful to have everything totally ready before you start.  

Next up: in a small bowl, combine the yeast, sugar, and warm water.  This will activate the wee little yeasties so they can get their gas on, and make your baked goods (pretzels, in this case) expand.  Yes, it sounds gross, but yeast are in fact fungi.  They eat the sugar, then burp up CO2 gas, which causes expansion.  (If you ever watch Good Eats, I'm sure you've seen the burping sock puppets... if not, Google it.  Now.)  

ANYWAY, You should let them sit until the mixture looks foamy, like so:

Meanwhile, mix the dry goods in the bowl of your stand mixer.  Like this, ok?

Next up, you add the yeast mixture, along with the oil, to the the dry team.  Mix it with the PADDLE attachment until you get something that looks like this:

Once you get here, it's time to switch to the dough hook.  Mix with the dough hook until the mixture comes together and forms a blob, like this:

You're not done yet!  After it comes together, set a timer for 8 minutes, turn your mixer on medium-low speed, and let the mixer knead your dough for you, until you get something like this:

Now, for those of you who don't have a handy dandy standy mixer... well, go buy one.  OK, so you can't just up and buy one?  Well then, you can do all the mixing and kneading by hand.  Start at the point where I say to switch to the dough hook on your mixer.  Here's a clip that explains how to knead dough by hand.  It'll take a while, and your arms WILL be tired afterwards, but the pretzels will be delicious and you'll appreciate them that much more for the elbow grease involved...

Moving on.

Meanwhile, prep a bowl for the rise.  I like to use a ceramic bowl that's a little bit warm.  It'll hold heat in and help the dough rise.  Liberally oil the inside of the bowl, and when you're done kneading the dough, form it into a ball, roll it around in the oiled bowl so that all surfaces are covered, and then cover the dough with plastic wrap, thusly:

Let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 1-2 hours depending on the temperature of the room.

While the dough is rising, prep your workspace by spreading OIL, (NOT four, like the recipe tells you...) all over until you're a greasy mess.

Also, if you have one, zero out a food scale with a plate on it.  You'll use the scale to measure your dough into equal pieces, for forming into pretzels.  If you don't have one, don't fret.  You'll just be eye-balling your dough.

Also, prep two baking sheets with grease and parchment paper.  I like a quick oiling to help hold the parchment in place, then more grease on top.  These pretzels will really want to stick- the oil and parchment may seem a bit drastic, but I assure you, the combo will make your life MUCH easier.

Next up, turn the dough out onto the greased work space, and squish it down.  If you want perfectly evenly sized pretzels, weigh the whole blob of dough and divide it by the number of pretzels you want to make.  Keep that number in your head. (By the way, the recipe says 12, but I usually make 18 slightly smaller pretzels with one batch of dough).  I then squish the dough it into a roughly rectangular shape, which I will explain in just a minute.

With the dough squished and your scale ready to go, you can use a dough blade, or pizza cutter, or whatever you have, to cut the dough into small rectangles of the appropriate weight.  For 18 pretzels, I find it's good to have each piece way around 2.1 oz.  (I've done this enough times that I don't bother weighing the whole blob anymore- 2.1 is usually close enough)

After you divide all the dough, you'll form the pretzels.  Your recipe will tell you to just start rolling each piece into a 3 foot rope.  I'm here to tell you, this will be next to impossible.  Instead, take each rectangle, and try to pull and roll it until it's about a foot long, then set it aside, and move to the next piece.  Once you've done 3 or 4 pieces, go back through the line.  The first pieces will have had time to rest, the gluten will have relaxed a bit, and you'll be able to continue stretching and rolling until you get a long roll of dough, like this:

NOW, is everyone ready?  Pay attention.  This is how you form a pretzel:

The dough will be very springy, so if your pretzels are a little small and blob-ey, well, that's ok.  Again, after you form a few, let them rest.  This will help them hold their shape.  

Once you have a few formed and rested, it's into the baking soda bath.  THIS is what makes a pretzel taste like a pretzel!  Dip the whole thing into a pot, bowl, or dish filled with warm water and baking soda.  Let them soak for about 30 seconds, then fish them back out.  A lot of times, the dough will initially sink to the bottom.  Generally, when it floats back to the surface, it's been long enough.

Fish them out using using a skimmer or slotted spoon.

The pretzels will probably have loosened up, (the water makes the surface of the dough slippery- be careful!) so you'll want your prepped baking sheets handy.  Place the pretzels directly on the baking sheet, like so:

When the sheet is full, sprinkle the pretzels LIBERALLY with kosher or sea salt (anything coarse grained), and bake for 8-10 minutes, until they're golden brown.  These ones are just headed into the oven:

And then, FINALLY, after you're ready to give up, cursing me for suggesting you try this, and entirely sick of wrangling dough...

There you have it, folks.  Delicious, home baked pretzels.  I know it's a lot of work, but I promise, practice makes it a lot faster and easier, and it's totally worth the effort.  I've never made these without totally impressing my friends and family- so give it a try!  Until next time... Happy Eating!