Soft Pretzels

Im a huge fan of large salted soft pretzels, the kind you get at a Disney park. Disney also have plain, jalapeno, cream cheese and cheese topped pretzels at their pretzel stands. But I always go for the salted. Maybe im a secret slug and salt is my weakness. I dont have salt on my food day to day, but I always tend to gravitate towards salted foods. Caramel, chocolate, popcorn, pretzels.

Ok, so you get the idea.... I like salt. I love soft pretzels. On with the recipe...

Soft Pretzels

Makes 16 small 3" soft pretzels OR 2 large and 8 small.

Pretzels before baking

Pretzels after baking

Ingredients

• 250ml warm water
• 1 tbsp yeast
• 2 tbsp white sugar
• 2 tbsp soft butter
• 2 tsp salt
• 440g of flour

• 5 tsp bicarbonate of soda for warm bath
• 1 egg for glazing
• Salt or grated cheese to top

Method

1. Add the 250ml warm water, yeast & salt into a mixing bowl, give it a little mix and leave for 10 minutes until the yeast gets all frothy.
2. After 10 minutes add the sugar, butter and flour and either bring together with your hands or let a mixer do the hard work with a dough hook attachment. Kneed the dough until their are no lumps and it is soft and smooth. I leave mine on a slow speed in my stand mixer for a few minutes.
3. Place in an oiled bowl and cover to rise for 1 hour. Treat the dough like bread. Put it someplace nice and warm.
4. Let the dough double in size, or get a little bigger at least. It probably wont rise as much as bread as its quite a heavy dough.
5. Once risen, kneed gently again and then get your oven hot and your pot boiling.
6. Your oven needs to be pre-heated to 180 c or gas mark 3
7. In a pan, gently boil some water and add the bicarbonate of soda to let the water gently simmer.
8. Divide your dough in half, then half again, and then half again so you have 16 balls of dough.
9. Roll each ball into a long rope and then shape into a pretzel. Heres a handy VIDEO
10. Mix your egg in a bowl ready to glaze. And have your salt or cheese ready to top.
11. Once all of them are shaped, pop 2 into the simmering water to boil. Use a large slotted spoon to turn the pretzel in the water. Boiling them for around 1 minute. Repeat with all of the pretzels.
12. While your next pretzels are boiling, give the already boiled pretzel a little glaze with your egg and top with salt or cheese. You can top with whatever you like really. I bake mine on an uncovered baking tray, so I glaze and top on that tray too. (in the photos you'll see i covered my tray with foil - bad mistake, they stuck badly, so its back to my tried and tested method.)
13. Once all pretzels are boiled, glazed and topped put them in your oven for 12-20 minutes depending on how your oven browns. Check regularly after 12 minutes. Mine took close to the 20 min mark as I also wanted the bottoms a little brown.
14. Once they are out of the oven you can then leave them as they are or dip in chocolate or caramel. OR if you're feeling adventurous, fill with cream cheese.
15. Pretzels really need to be eaten within a day or two. Best the same day.

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