In a previous post I claimed to know a thing or two about pretzel baking… I guess it’s time to deliver the proof:

Here is my recipe:

• 500g (1.1lb) bread flour (I use all purpose when I’m out of bread flour)
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 350ml(1 1/2 cups) warm milk
• 40g (1/3 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 pkg. yeast

Mix the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt and yeast) with a stand mixer on low.

Melt the butter in the microwave and mix it with the warm milk. Make sure that the mixture is not too hot, otherwise the yeast will die a horrible death (and the pretzels will be pretty dense). Add the milk/butter mixture to the mixing bowl and wait until everything comes together.

It may be necessary to add one or two table spoons of water. Mix for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, remove the dough from the bowl, spray the bowl with cooking spray, and put the dough back into the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for three hours in a warm place, or over night in the fridge.

Heat the oven to 425F.

Divide the dough into eight pieces (I usually end up with about 112g per piece). Roll the dough into a long rope. Make sure that the middle part is thicker than the ends.

I usually do this in two steps: First I roll out all pieces to about 12″ – this gives the dough some extra time to rest. In the second step, I bring them to the full 24″ that I need to form pretzels.

Form the pretzels and let them rest for a few more minutes.

While forming the pretzels, bring a pot with water to boil (about 1qt) and add about 1/3 box of baking soda.

Once the water is boiling, submerge one pretzel at a time and boil it for 15 seconds. After taking the pretzel out of the water, put it on a baking sheet that is covered with parchment paper. Sprinkle with pretzel salt while the dough is still wet. This helps the salt to stick.

Cut the thick part of the pretzel length-wise with a very sharp knife.

Reduce the oven temperature to 375F and place the baking sheet(s) into the oven. Rotate the sheets after about 10 minutes.

Bake for about 25 minutes.

Take the pretzels out of the oven and cool them on a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

As usual, you can see higher resolution images when you click on the images on this page.

As everybody who knows me can attest to, I’m a big Alton Brown fan. Last week’s “Good Eats” (this page has a video that starts when the page is loaded – bad!) episode was about my favorite food: Pretzels (or Brezen, how they are called in Bavaria). Given that I’m a pretty good pretzel baker myself, I think I have to critique the show and his process a bit…

The process in general was pretty close to how I do it. There even were erie similarities (e.g. how he cut his batch into eight pieces by weighing every piece, or that he’s using the same Soehnle scale that I use). But, there of course were things I do different, and things that were clearly wrong!

I use milk instead of water. I did a few test runs with recipes containing 100% water, 50/50 water and milk, and 100% milk. My taste tests did show that the pretzels made with just milk were the most authentic (and when I say authentic, I mean Bavarian). But even with just water, the pretzels are still very good.

Where he really went wrong was with how he formed the pretzels: First of all, when you roll out the dough, it is important that the ends are thinner than the middle part, and there just has to be a twist between the two ends cross each other. This is actually shown correctly at the beginning of the show at the end of the story about the Italian monk. Here is a picture of authentic German pretzels:

His second faux pas was that he did not cut into the dough just before baking them (after the boiling step). This will help the pretzels to rise. When the dough gets boiled, the outer layer of the pretzel becomes tough, which means that the yeast has a much harder time to work against the surface tension of the dough. Once the dough is cut with a sharp knife, we created an outlet and the middle of the pretzel will rise nicely.

And then of course, there was the story with the mustard. Don’t get me wrong, mustard is my most favorite condiment. Some people actually have accused me of using e.g. a wiener sausage as edible spoon for mustard… But, I would never – NEVER – put mustard on a preztel. Mustard goes on the sausage that you eat with your pretzel – and of course, that would preferably be a “Weisswurst“, the famous Bavarian white sausage (I am getting mine from Hartmann’s):

Here is a batch of my pretzels:

I still have to try his mustard recipe.