Coming across a warm soft pretzel is usually happenstance at a fair or football game. But wouldn't it be a dream to have a chewy pretzel whenever you wanted it? We agree, and we're sharing our family-friendly recipe for you to try at home!
They begin with a dough, not unlike any you’ve made before, with flour, water, yeast, salt, and butter. After fermentation, to help get that tang we all love, they are shaped into the classic twist. Before they’re baked, they are dipped in a food-grade lye solution, which is responsible for the brown, shiny exterior that calls to us from a bakeshop window.
This recipe, designed to be made at home, calls for a baking soda solution to replace the not-so-kid-friendly lye that we use in our bakeshops. The results won’t be as shiny and dark as the professional kind, but it’s still pretzel-y.
These pretzels are shaped into classic twists, which is so fun but can be hard for those of us lacking in fine motor skills and/or patience. Luckily, a pretzel is a pretzel no matter the shape, so if you prefer, you can roll the dough into logs and then cut little bite-size pretzel nuggets. You can also make small round rolls or bagel shapes – anything hungry minds can imagine!
And the variations don’t stop there. Add raisins to the dough while it’s mixing, or dust the pretzels with cinnamon sugar before baking to make a great sweet pretzel. And don’t forget the dippers! Spicy, whole grain mustard is classic, but you might also love nut butter, melted chocolate (sweet and salty), and the mall-classic cheese sauce.
The best part of this recipe is that it can be made ahead of time and frozen. Homemade bread can get stale quickly, but you can bake and cool the pretzels, then freeze them in a resealable bag to help extend their shelf life. If you’ve made small bites, you can even put them into your kids’ (yes, or yours, you big kid!) lunchbox frozen, and they’ll be ready by lunch time.
