- If you've ever wanted
to make your own homemade soft pretzels,
then today's video is for you.
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Hey, you're watching "Preppy Kitchen,"
where I, John Kanell,
teach you how to make delicious homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These soft pretzels will be ready before you know it,
so let's get started.
Pour some warm water into the bowl of your mixer.
Oftentimes these are ice cold
and it just brings the temperature down so far,
it messes things up.
So a little warm water
then dump it out into your sink.
Add one and a half cups of warm-ish water.
It should be 110 degrees or so.
I used a thermometer.
Our yeast needs some energy to wake up
so we're gonna add a tablespoon of sugar.
There we go.
Could be a little bit liberal if you want.
Now it's time for the yeast.
You can use rapid or instant yeast.
Just add one package in.
We're gonna mix this up and set it aside
for about five minutes or until the yeast is nice and foamy.
If there's no foam,
your yeast might be dead.
So I'm sorry,
you'll have to start over.
If your water is too hot,
it'll also kill the yeast.
So don't have scalding hot water.
Should be very warm to the touch but not hot.
While the yeast is waking up,
go ahead and melt two tablespoons of butter.
That's gonna give you a really soft, rich pretzel.
I love these pretzels, by the way.
We're gonna measure out four cups of flour.
I'm gonna add this in parts,
so I want this in a separate bowl.
Set this aside and then we'll be scooping half
of it in to begin with and saving the rest for last.
It'll make sense when it happens.
While you're at it,
you can mix one teaspoon of salt right into the flour
and then just mix it in.
It'll get mixed in better later on.
You don't need a whisk right now.
Take a look at this.
It is so foamy right now and it's only been a few minutes.
I'm gonna pop this on to my mixer
but I'm not gonna add the dough hook yet
because we're gonna mix this up by hand.
It's so much easier.
A cup of flour.
You wanna make like a slurry basically.
It just mixes up so much better
if you don't dump all the flour in at once.
Let's add one more cup of flour.
Don't think I forgot about
that two tablespoons of melted butter.
So it's melted, slightly cooled.
Just dump that right in there.
Mix this into just a smooth paste.
Now we have our base.
Get that dough hook out.
So I'm gonna add one cup of flour in
while this mixes on medium speed,
which is about a four.
Just add it in.
(mixer whirring)
Keep adding more flour until you're all done.
Well, well, well.
I dunno.
All right,
just really quickly before the mixer goes to town,
we're going to just scrape the bowl down.
(mixer whirring)
You're gonna see the dough's
gonna come together really quickly.
It's not sticking to the bowl.
Hm.
We're just gonna run it until gets smoother
and we're gonna talk about the window pane test
in just a second.
Three minutes later,
let's see how our flour looks.
It should be sticky but not crazy
and you can see it's not sticking to my finger,
which is great.
It is bouncing back to the touch.
I'm gonna get this dough out and knead it by hand
for about four minutes.
Bring this over.
Oh my gosh.
I love the way this feels.
Look at that.
That's a really nice dough.
So bring it over.
Just knead the dough.
You want it to have some balance to be smooth
and you can see already this is a nice dough.
It's not,
it's bouncing back,
it's as it should be.
The one test that you do wanna see is the window pane test.
You're gonna pinch some dough and see
if you can see the light through it.
I actually can do that.
That's so nice.
Take your precious dough.
A little bit of oil,
just so it doesn't stick.
This brings back so many memories
of making bread with my mom.
All right.
Cover this up.
Warm and cozy place for about 40 minutes.
In you go.
My dough has doubled in size
and right now you're gonna set 10 cups of water to a boil.
Set that oven to 450 and measure out 2/3
of a cup of baking soda.
It's a lot of baking soda
but this is the magical ingredient
that makes those soft pretzels brown
with that great texture and taste.
So 2/3 of a cup so it's ready to go later on.
Okay, so divide this into eight pieces
and you can do that however you'd like.
I'm using a bench scraper
and you can see the dough is sticky.
So I'm gonna just give it a little bit of flour.
Now for the fun part.
You're gonna roll these out to be about two feet long,
22 to 24 inches.
I like to give them a bit of a stretch first
and then we're going to roll them up.
I'm horrible at measuring
so I actually have a little measuring tape out
'cause you want them to be the right length
so you get that nice pretzel shape.
This is not measuring up.
Ah, let's try that one more time.
There we go, perfect.
Okay, now for the fun part.
I am not an expert pretzel folder,
so bear with me,
but this is how it goes.
You make a U-shape and you give it a twist just like that.
And then you twist it one more time
and then you fold it over.
I just let it rest for a second.
But if it's not sticking,
a little bit of water will just work like a magic.
Repeat that process for the remaining pretzels
and you can see that if you have 24 inches,
it makes a bigger pretzel like very noticeably bigger
than a 22-inch rope.
So that can kind of come in handy to measure it out.
Okay, my water's boiling.
Add the baking soda in and now gently lower in your pretzel.
It should release from the slotted spoon pretty easily.
After it boils for 30 seconds,
just take it out.
Oops.
Carefully take it out.
Place it onto a baking sheet.
You can do them in groups.
I'll be doing them one by one because I don't trust myself
to only leave them in for 30 seconds.
If you leave them in for longer,
it will take on too much of that baking soda taste.
A little boil goes a long way.
All right, my pretzels are all done boiling,
almost ready for the oven.
I'm gonna add an optional egg wash
onto these guys over here.
It's gonna help brown them up even more
and give you a nice glossy finish.
If you want,
you could do butter before and after the bake.
That's an option as well.
Okay, just a little bit of egg over the surface.
It'll gloss things up and you can use that for your salt.
In these pretzels,
you can see some of the characteristic cracking
where they kind of bulged out during the bake.
That is gonna be so pretty once they're all baked up.
Just you wait.
Grab some salt and we're gonna sprinkle this on.
Just a little salt on top makes a big difference.
Look at that big pyramid.
So pretty.
I love salt crystals.
Into the oven, 450 for about 12 minutes
or until they are a golden, deep brown color.
Okay, in you go.
Out of the oven, golden, beautiful.
I wish you could smell this.
If you liked this recipe,
check out my bread playlist.
(crunching)
That's everything you want it to be.
I'll see you in the next video.