Hey everyone it's Sam here from Sugar Spun Run and today I'll be showing you how to make homemade soft pretzels.
I'm going to be showing you how to make soft pretzels in the comfort of your own kitchen. I think you're really going to
love this recipe. It's pretty simple. There's only a 30-minute rise time for
the whole thing, but there is a little bit of technique involved. So we're going
to be covering that today. I think you're really going to love this one so let's
jump in and get started. Now the first thing that you're going to need for
today's soft pretzel recipe is three cups of bread flour. I really do
recommend using bread flour rather than all-purpose flour, because it's going to
give your pretzels the proper texture. So use bread flour. We're going to add this to the bowl of a stand mixer.
To this bowl, we are also going to add three tablespoons of tightly packed light brown sugar,
two and a half teaspoons of instant yeast, and a teaspoon of salt.
As you can see I've fitted my stand mixer with a dough hook, and we're just going to use
this to stir these dry ingredients together until they're completely combined.
If your dough hook is having trouble getting the sides of the bowl,
make sure you use a spoon or spatula, so you can scrape down the sides, because it
really is important that all of your ingredients get well combined.
Now we're going to add one cup of hot water and it is important that this water be between
110 and 115 degrees Fahrenheit. Now this water is going to react with the yeast.
So in order for the proper reaction to occur, it really needs to be in that temperature range.
We'll also add two tablespoons of melted unsalted butter.
and use your mixer to stir everything together until it's completely combined.
Again, if your mixer is having trouble getting to the sides make sure you
scrape those so that all of your flour gets well incorporated.
You'll want to use your mixer on a low to medium speed to continue to stir this dough until it
begins to cling together. Now what you're looking for is, a dough that's smooth and
elastic, and it's clinging to itself, it's pulling away from the sides of the bowl,
and it can still be a little bit tacky to the touch but it shouldn't be so
sticky that it's unmanageable. Now if your dough isn't coming together nicely
like this one is looking right, now you may need to add a little bit more bread
flour. Start with just a tablespoon at a time, and keep adding flour as needed
until you get that texture that we're looking for. So right now our dough is
looking pretty good without needing to add any extra
flour. As you can see it's clinging to itself. It's forming a ball. If you touch
it, it's a little bit tacky, but it's not sticking to my fingers. It's not going to
be unmanageable. So what I'm going to do now is I'm actually going to take this
dough, and I'm going to transfer over to a separate bowl. Now, first, what I want to
do is, I want to drizzle this with just a little bit of olive oil and brush that
oil around the bottom, up the sides of the bowl. Transfer your dough to this
prepared bowl, and cover it tightly with cling wrap.
Now our soft pretzel dough is going to need to rise for 30 minutes or until
it's doubled in size. Now, you're going to want to put this in a draft free and
warm spot to help facilitate that rising process. I recommend preheating your oven
to 450 degrees Fahrenheit at this point because that's what we're going to be
baking our pretzels on in just a bit, and place your dough on top of the oven.
That's usually the warmest place in the house for me, so it really helps the
dough get a nice rise. Once your soft pretzel dough has doubled in size, now we
are ready to turn this out, and actually form it into some pretzel shapes. So what
I'm going to do is I'm going to turn this dough out into a lightly floured clean surface.
What I like to do is, I like to form this dough into a log, and
then I'm just going to use a knife to break it into 9 or 10 even sized pieces,
and each of these pieces we are going to turn into a pretzel. To make our pretzel
shapes, we're going to start by taking our dough and rolling it between our
hands, and on our clean surface until it forms a long rope. Now mine is usually
pretty long, about 20 to 24 inches.
Now if you didn't pre-heat your oven earlier while your dough is rising make sure you do that now you want your oven to be
preheating to 450 degrees Fahrenheit. So once we have our rope formed, we are
going to form this into a pretzel shape. Going to start by making a "U"
Twist that over itself
Twist it again.
Fold this over.
We'll transfer our pretzels to a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
Repeat this process with the rest of our dough. Now that we've prepped our
pretzels before we bake them in the oven we are going to actually be giving them
a baking soda bath. So this is something I really like to do, because it's going
to help our pretzels get that nice golden brown color while they're cooking
in the oven. It's going to also help really give them a good flavor and
texture. So you really don't want to skip this. To do that you're going to head
over to the stovetop, and we're going to need a large pot. We're going to add 8 cups of water to that.
To this pot we are going to add 1/4 cup of baking soda turn your stovetop to a high heat, and we're going to bring this mixture to a boil.
Once it's boiling, we're going to head back to our pretzels, and one at a time,
we are going to carefully lower them into the boiling water, and we're going
to let them cook for 30 seconds on each side, before removing them, draining them
and returning them to our baking sheet, where we will want to make sure they're
spaced about an inch and a half apart. We'll repeat this process with our
pretzels, one at a time until they have all been cooked. Once we've given all of
our pretzels their baking soda bath, now I like to give them a light brushing
with an egg wash mixture. Now an egg wash mixture is very easy to make. We're going
to start with one large egg, and we'll add 1 tablespoon of water, and just use a
fork to scramble these together. Just lightly beat the egg, and I'm just going
to use a pastry brush to lightly brush this mixture over each pretzel. If you
can find pretzel salt in your local grocery store, you can certainly use that.
I can't seem to find that around me anymore so what I like to use is just a
coarse sprinkling or a sprinkling of coarse sea salt, and I'll just grind this over each pretzel.
These are now ready for our 450 degree fahrenheit oven. We'll
transfer them to our oven where they will need to bake for about 8 to 10
minutes, or until they are a nice golden brown.
And that is how you make homemade soft pretzels completely from scratch. I may not roll out the prettiest pretzels,
but I think you guys are going to love how delicious these are. If you try out,
please leave me a comment, and let me know what you think. I always love
hearing from you guys. Well thank you so much for watching today's video and I will see you next time
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