Alton Brown Makes Soft Pretzels | Good Eats | Food Network

[Music] based on my examination of the field sample i have decided to adapt an old bagel recipe that i feel produces a bread that is very close to a soft pretzel only i'm going to add butter in fact two ounces of unsalted melted butter and more water one and a half cups in fact heated to around 115 degrees to that i will add one tablespoon of sugar two teaspoons of kosher salt and one package worth of active dry yeast that's a two and a half teaspoons meanwhile weigh out 22 ounces of all-purpose flour that's about four and a half cups one pound six ounces there we go now i've got a tear function on my scale so i can just zero out the weight of the mixing bowl before the flour went in now clamp this on to your mixer add your water yeast slurry and the two ounces of melted butter to bring this together we will employ captain hook and we're gonna do this at low speed just until the dough comes together when the dough ball comes together thusly boost the speed to medium for four to five minutes this will trigger the great cosmic intermingling of water and wheat proteins like gluten and gliadin which form gluten well just about the time that the old mixer crawls right off of the counter we should be done dough should be nice smooth and satiny like this he's kind of almost like a matte finish comes away in a ball so we will get rid of the hook give the bowl a quick spray with some no stick because as this rises it will get very sticky indeed back in the bowl we will cover the bowl with a tea towel oh it's pretty and stash this in a warm place say 70 degrees for one hour as you can see our dough has doubled in size signifying that it is prepared to move on to the next phase of production first we must portion our dough we have 36 ounces of this stuff and we would like eight portions so that's um excellent uh four and a half ounces each now we cut [Music] now you certainly don't have to do this with the scale you can simply divide your dough into eight even pieces but trust me this is easier now we shape make sure that uh that you have plenty of room here put your ball right in front of you and squish it out with the heel of your hand so you get a little rectangle there now roll it up nice and tight and make a good seam along the bottom there now start rolling with just one hand the goal is to push it away with some pressure then just roll it back lightly and push it again and when it gets long enough i have the second hand now if you start to see a twist form right in the very middle of the dough you know that you do not have your your hands coordinated and that twist could become a break point so be watching for that now our target length is 24 inches give or take an inch or so there now for the uh the basic uh pretzel shape fold this end around and this end around you don't have to press down just barely pinch so that they join there you can move that onto the pan and go ahead and cover it with a tea towel and give that a few spritzes of water just to keep it damp now i'm sure there are other ways to dip a pretzel but i think this rig is pretty sweet here i have 10 cups of boiling water and a wide saute pan which i've added two-thirds of a cup of baking soda now uh i'm just kind of bathing uh the pretzels two at a time lifting them uh out and dropping them in with a slightly altered splatter screen you could use a spatula or a spider whatever you happen to have i'm going to scoot those out while they're still nice and warm and get on the next load i am figuring that 30 seconds should be the perfect amount of exposure for the alkaline to do its job and of course the the hot water is also going to go to work uh gelatinizing the starches on the outside this is by the way the exact precise uh method for making bagels and i figure that's a that's a good thing of course these are never going to be as golden brown and delicious on the outside as the lie dipped versions but wait hold on many is the pastry item that has received an extra dash of color from eggs one egg yolk thinned with a tablespoon of water should provide enough wash for our entire batch the other nice thing about the egg wash is it will definitely help that salt to stay in place park these in the hot box 450 for 14 minutes and give the pans a spin seven minutes in you

Channel: Food Network

Views: 448,956

Keywords: alton, alton brown, baking, best, best eats, chef, classicfood network, cook, cooking, directions, dough, easy recipe, easy recipes, eat, flour, fn, food, food network, food network recipes, food trends, good eats, good eats recipes, homemade, how to make, how to make soft prezels, how-to, ingredients, new food, party, pretzels, quick, recipe, recipes, salt, salty, show, simple, snack, snack recipes, soft pretzel recipe, soft prezel, travel food, trendy food, tutorial, tv, world food, yeast

Id: rUu7EP2zKCc

Length: 5min 24sec (324 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 17 2019