Homemade Preztels

My first job, when I was fifteen, was as the sample girl at Auntie Anne's in Rivergate Mall (a little north of Nashville). The sample girl... (You remember that, Ma?) Oh my gosh have I changed since then! And it has been 14 years since I rolled out a pretzel, but on Saturday I rolled out 8 edible and fairly pretzel-shaped treats that my family and neighbors loved!


Actually, I shaped six in the traditional form, and two I tried to make into cinnamon twists. The form was bad, but I mixed it up a little and included chopped almonds, dried orange zest, and cinnamon with a slight tad of sugar in the topping. AmaZing! UH-MAY-ZEEN!!!!!!

BEFORE

AFTER

I recently found this recipe in our newspaper, but it credits the original recipe to "The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion". It is definitely worth the work/time/wait!!!!!! (ummm, I don't know about copyright laws, so I'm just gonna take a chance and post it here):

Hot Buttered Pretzels
Makes 8 pretzels

Dough:

2 ½ cups unbleached flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

2 ¼ teaspoons instant yeast

7/8 to 1 cup warm water (see note)

Topping:

½ cup warm water

1 teaspoon sugar

Coarse, kosher or pretzel salt

3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Place all of the dough ingredients into a bowl, and beat until well combined. Knead the dough, by hand or mixer, for about 5 minutes, until it's soft, smooth and quite slack. Dust the dough with flour (to keep it from sticking) and place it in a plastic bag; close the bag, leaving room for the dough to expand, and let it rest 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Prepare two baking sheets by spraying them with vegetable oil spray or lining them with parchment paper.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface and divide it into eight equal pieces. Allow the pieces to rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes.

Roll each piece of dough into a long, thin rope (about 22 inches long), and twist each rope into a pretzel. Dip each pretzel in the warm water mixed with 1 teaspoon sugar, and place them on the baking sheets. Sprinkle them lightly with salt. (Alternatively, brush with the sugar water and sprinkle with salt; easier to keep their shape this way.) Allow them to rest, uncovered, 10 minutes.

Bake pretzels in preheated oven 8 to 9 minutes, or until they're golden brown, reversing the baking sheets halfway through.

Remove pretzels from oven, and brush them thoroughly with the melted butter. Keep brushing the butter on until you've used it all up; it may seem like a lot, but that's what gives these pretzels their ethereal taste. Eat the pretzels warm, or reheat them in an oven or microwave.

Note: Use the greater amount of water in the winter, the lesser amount in the summer, and somewhere in between in the spring and fall. Your goal is a soft dough.

Ok, so we're a whole-wheat-only family. I used slightly less flour, and wet the dough several times while kneading. They might have used even less flour, but they were great!


I also found that you do NOT need that half-cup of water to wet all the pretzels in the final stages if you are simply brushing the water on.


In anticipation of making these, I looked through my two Good Eats books, and then went online to find out if Alton Brown might have a pretzel recipe. He did have a Good Eats show on pretzels, which, although it might be full of fun historical facts, did not have an appetizing recipe. (Sometimes he has so many gimmicks leading up to the recipe that I honestly get confused by the end of the show on what I'm supposed to be doing...) I opted out of doing AB's recipe this time... Sorry, AB... King Arthur won this time =)



There was also an original recipe in the same article for mustard cheese sauce, but it was kind of crappy, so I'm not going to bother posting it here =)


If you make these, let me know how they turned out!