Time: About 2 hours Bavarian Soft Pretzels (Laugenbrezeln) last modified on 20 February 2015
Note: Original recipe published in NY Times: May 25, 2010, adapted from a recipe from Zingerman's Bakehouse, Ann Arbor, MI, with further slight modifications by me.
Time: About 2 hours Yield: 12 pretzels
- 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar (or barley malt syrup)
- 2 tablespoons softened unsalted butter (or lard)
- 2 tablespoons(2 packs) instant yeast
- 5 1/2 - 6 cups bread flour
- 2 cups water
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 2 cups lye solution for dipping (1Tbs NaOH pellets + 2 cups water)
Coarse sea salt or pretzel salt, for sprinkling (do not substitute kosher salt).
- In a mixing bowl, stir together sugar, salt, butter, 2 cups 110 deg warm water and 1 cup of flour. Heat mixture if necessary to 100 degrees in microwave. Mix yeast into mixture and let stand for 5 min. Add 3 more cups of flour and stir just until mixture comes together in a shaggy mass, adding as much flour as necessary.
- Turn out onto counter (too tough for dough hook and stand mixer) and knead for 8 to 10 minutes, until smooth and supple, adding more of the remaining flour as necessary. Flatten into a fat disk and cut like a pizza into 12 pie shaped wedges. Let rest 5 minutes.
- Roll out each piece into a rope about 22 inches long. (For traditional shape, the ends should be thin and the center fat.) An easy way to do this is to separate the top and bottom of the wedge with your fingers, starting from the pointing end, sort of "unfolding" the wedge so that it has two pointy ends and is fat in the middle. Then roll it out! Then lift both ends, twist them around each other once, then bring ends back and press them on either side of fat “belly,” at about 4 o’clock and 8 o’clock. Transfer shaped pretzels to a greased baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Let rise at room temperature for 20 minutes, then put in freezer for 20 min to make them easier to handle when you dip them in lye. Instead of freezing, you can also refrigerate for at least one hour and up to overnight.
- Heat oven to 425 degrees.
- In a deep bowl, wearing rubber or latex gloves, make a 3% Lye solution by pouring 1 Tbsp (1/2 oz=15g) NaOH pellets into 2 cups (1/2 liter=500gm) water (pour lye carefully into water to avoid splashing). Dip each pretzel in solution, turning it over for 10 to 15 seconds, let the excess lye drip off and place back on greased baking sheet.
- Cut an arc on the fat part of the pretzel about 1/4 deep with a razor blade.
- Sprinkle pretzels with salt. Bake for about 15 minutes or until deep brown,swiching racks after 7 min. Remove to a rack and serve warm with butter.