Pretzel is a typical South Tyrolean or German bread that can be salty or sweet, often used as a snack or appetizer. It has won us over, thanks to its distinctive flavor given by the soda cooking mixture, which I didn’t dare to try and replaced with baking soda. It retains a unique flavor; I’ve never tried the sweet variant, but the salty one is liked by the whole family and suits various moments of our daily life. It’s convenient to bring to work, makes the aperitif unique accompanied by cold cuts, and is appreciated by the younger nephews, probably because of its peculiar bow-tie shape. I relied on the recipe from this site making small changes to adapt it to my taste but above all to my rhythms, as always I also provide you with my rising times, but with the help of the fridge, you can slow them down.
I made the pretzels with sourdough, but I’ll also give you the ingredients for using yeast; in this case, the rising times will obviously be different, but you can follow the same process.
For those who, like us, love homemade bread and various leavened goods, I also leave you
- Difficulty: Medium
- Cost: Cheap
- Rest time: 10 Hours
- Preparation time: 30 Minutes
- Portions: 10 pieces
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: German
- Energy 391.21 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 75.66 (g) of which sugars 2.85 (g)
- Proteins 12.47 (g)
- Fat 5.72 (g) of which saturated 3.26 (g)of which unsaturated 2.14 (g)
- Fibers 2.76 (g)
- Sodium 2,801.16 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 100 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1.67 cups cake flour
- 5.3 oz sourdough starter (active)
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsps butter (soft)
- 2 tsp fine salt
- to taste coarse salt (for the surface)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups cake flour
- 0.53 oz fresh yeast
- 1.18 cup water (about)
- 1 tsp honey
- 2 tbsps butter (soft)
- 2 tsp salt
- to taste coarse salt (for the surface)
- 1 quart water
- 8 tsps baking soda
- 2 tsps salt
Tools
For kneading, I always recommend using a stand mixer, but you could also do it by hand.
- 1 Stand Mixer Howork
- 1 Pot
- 1 Ladle Lagostina
Preparation
Place the flours and crumbled sourdough starter in the stand mixer’s bowl, attach the dough hook, and start at the lowest speed. Gradually add water, leaving a bit aside to add later if needed; I used all of it. With the mixer running, add honey, salt, and finally butter. Each time you add an ingredient, give the dough time to recover before adding the next; it should never come apart completely. Once the butter is added, increase the speed to medium for about a minute and turn off the mixer. Form the dough into a ball and place it in a lightly oiled glass bowl covered with plastic wrap.
Let it rise in a draft-free place; I always prefer the turned-off oven until it doubles. It took about 7 hours to get the dough as you see in the photo; with yeast, it will take about 3 hours. You can speed up the rise using a proofing box at 104°F or slow it down according to your schedule by letting the dough rise in the refrigerator.
After rising, turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide it into 10 pieces. Stretch each piece by hand, as you see in the photo, into a stick about 15.75 inches with finer ends compared to the center. Fold the ends towards the center, crossing them as you see in the photo, which I deliberately left turned to show the classic pretzel twist. Place the pretzels to rise again, covered with a cloth, and position them all with the twist resting on the work surface to prevent them from opening during baking.
Let them rise for another 2 hours with sourdough and half an hour with yeast.
Now it’s time to boil each Pretzel in the baking soda solution for a few seconds to give them their distinctive flavor. Bring the water, baking soda, and salt to a boil, then dip one pretzel at a time for about 20 seconds. Drain with the skimmer and leave them to dry on a cloth uncovered so they can dry a bit on the surface. As soon as you remove them from the boiling water, sprinkle a few grains of coarse salt on each Pretzel.
Finally, when your Pretzels have dried, I waited about 30 minutes, bake them in a preheated oven at 410°F for about 20-25 minutes. I could have taken them out a couple of minutes earlier, but we like them well-cooked. Before baking, you can make slight cuts on the lower central part of the pretzel with a razor blade to let them blow up better, but you can also avoid it depending on how you like to see them, as the flavor does not change.
NOTES
We consumed our Pretzels on the same day, so we kept them in the classic bread basket. But if you want to save them for the next day, I recommend putting them in a food bag, or you can freeze them and take them out when needed.
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If you liked the recipe or have any questions, feel free to comment here or on social media Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
