Food Friday--Soft Pretzels

We all like pretzels of all shapes and sizes, but the soft, butter-slathered-coarse-salt-sprinkled ones are probably the best.

I will be honest.  I have attempted to make soft pretzels in the past and achieved a spectacular failure that tasted nothing like pretzels, or even anything edible.

This time, though, I modified the recipe and bravely tried again.  These pretzels tasted very pretzel-like and were eagerly devoured by everyone, even garnering a sigh of contentment from the picky teenager. Success!  :)

Soft Pretzels
This recipe is one of those that sounds like it might be more trouble than it's worth.  It's not.  Really.  These pretzels are so good, and totally worth it.

What you need:

2 cups warm (NOT hot!) water (110 - 115 degrees)
1 package or 1 Tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
5-6 cups flour
6 cups water
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 large egg
1 Tablespoon water
Toppings: coarse salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, grated parmesan cheese, cinnamon butter, butter, vanilla sugar

What you do:

Heat your oven to 475 degrees and spray a baking sheet with non-stick spray, or line with parchment paper.

I do a lot of baking, so this is the kind of yeast I buy.  

Place your brown sugar and yeast in a large bowl, then add the 2 cups of warm water and stir gently with a wooden spoon.  Let this sit for about 10 minutes.  The yeast will activate and the mixture will get bubbly.

Brown sugar and yeast, ready for warm water.

Add in your flour slowly, stirring with your wooden spoon, until the mixture gets too thick to stir with the spoon, then add in the rest of the flour slowly while mixing by hand.  You may not need all 6 cups of the flour--I only used a bit over 5 cups.  Turn your dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 2-3 minutes, then divide into 16 roughly equal portions of dough.

Done kneading, ready to become pretzels.

Using your hands, form your dough into whatever shapes you desire, pretzel shapes (or circles or even dinosaurs) on a lightly floured surface.  Add more flour to the surface as necessary.

Oddly shaped pretzels, before cooking.  

Now for the part that will make the pretzels taste like pretzels.  :)  Add the 6 cups of water and the 1/2 teaspoon baking soda to a large skillet and bring to a boil. Place three or four pretzels in the water at a time and cook for 1 minute, then remove from the boiling water and drain on a cooling rack. If your water turns a weird orangish-yellow color about halfway through, pour it out and add another 6 cups of water and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda and bring that to back to a boil before you go on.

After your pretzels are boiled and drained, put them on your prepared baking sheet(s) and beat the egg with the tablespoon of water and brush on top of the pretzels.  At this point, you can add your desired toppings and bake, or you can wait to add topping until after the pretzels are done.  Either way, bake them for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven and let cool slightly.

After boiling, they look even more weird.  :)  

If you waited to add your toppings, melt some butter and brush the melted butter onto the tops of your pretzels and then sprinkle them with your toppings right before you eat them.

We made some with pink Himalayan salt and some with vanilla sugar and they were both good.

Coarse salt might be better, but this was pretty good.

This was really good, too.  

Store in an airtight container, and eat them quickly.  They will get moldy in less than a week if you don't eat them.

Happy pretzel eater.  I didn't think to get a photo of the finished pretzel before he devoured it.  

Also, in the background you can see the aftermath of a spider infestation.  We had to clean out the pantry closet and all the stuff we were able to save is on the floor while I fumigated the closet.  Life is never boring!