Bavarian soft pretzels (safely) bathed in caustic soda

the real thing homemade Bavarian style soft pretzels treated with sodium hydroxide lye nothing else gets you that glossy deep mahogany finish while the inside remains moist and pillowy that's why hydroxide is traditional yes there are some safety issues to consider and we're going to discuss those in detail first dough for four big pretzels I've got a cup and a half of water 355 mils but none of these quantities need to be exact maybe a teaspoon of sugar or in this case I'm using malted barley syrup pretzels are from the land of beer about a teaspoon of dry yeast I'll give it a teaspoon and a half some people put in a little fat some people don't I like a tablespoon of oil or melted butter then like two teaspoons Max of this kosher salt inside the dough remember we're gonna have salt on top as well bread flour if you have it but all-purpose flour would be fine as much as I can stir in with a spoon this is how I start almost all of my doughs nowadays this is the stage when dough is most likely to flow in among the little hairs on your fingers where it rise and then it hurts to get out so I mixed this stage with a spoon as much flour as I can stir in now look how the dough breaks when I stretch it out I'm going to let this sit for 15 minutes or so to autolice then check out how the dough stretches into a sheet it's a totally different substance it won't flow between your hairs and it'll be far easier to knead in almost as much flour as the dough will take traditional pretzel dough is low hydration Once the dough is dry enough that I don't think it'll leave a sticky residue on my counter to clean I'll start kneading on the counter you don't have to jam in all the flour this dough will take but most of it the dough should be just barely sticky like that that's what Circa 55 hydration looks like hydration is the weight of the water divided by the weight of the flower so I've probably got like 650 grams of flour in there four and a half cups or something like that but I don't measure back in the bowl and cover to let rise overnight in the fridge or a couple hours on the counter put a time lapse on that baby and it puffs up almost almost as fast as my premium mattress in a box from Helix sponsor of this video Helix sleep makes extremely high quality foam and spring mattresses and bedding customized to fit your needs and conveniently shipped right to your door free within the US that's the Box my king-size Helix came in I just dragged it into the room broke the vacuum seal and poof there's the Helix dusk we've been sleeping on for a year and a half now it's the model recommended to us after we took the Sleep quiz on helix's website you tell them your general Dimensions Helix has mattresses for plus size people everybody you tell them what kind of firmness you like if you sleep on your side or your stomach and if you have any back problems and there the perfect mattress for you and your partner you get a 100 night sleep trial along with a 10-year warranty and there are financing options and flexible payment plans if I ever sleep badly it's not the fault of my amazing mattress usually it's my penchant for night snacking which is not the fault of the good people at Helix this bed is tops get 20 off your Helix mattress plus two free pillows with my link below or go to Helix sleep.com slash regusia Helix sleep.com slash regusia for 20 off thank you Helix anyway I can reuse this plastic wrap in about two minutes so save that pull out the dough and cut her into quarters smash out a quarter into a little triangle grab the tip of the triangle and roll the dough tightly into a little log this is a valuable final kneading step and it gets us halfway to our final shape I'll cover those so they don't dry out and let the gluten relax for at least 15 minutes or so now they'll be much easier to stretch no flour on the counter I want the dough to grip onto the counter lightly that helps me roll it out and a traditional Bavarian thing is to leave the center the belly of the pretzel leave that pretty fat that part bakes up soft and fluffy while the thin little arms get crispy two treats in one the pros fold these in one smooth motion up in the air I'm not that cool I'll just lay this on the counter make a u-shape fold the arms over on themselves once and then twice and then lift them up and back over to seal on the edges of the belly you want to get these ropes quite thin when you're using a real lie bath if the pretzel is too thick it might burn on the outside before it's done on the inside and once I've got these shaped I'm not going to proof them I'm not going to let them ferment and get puffy again in Germany I gather they usually shape and then bake these right away I suspect a denser texture retains water a little better in the oven and keeps the inside from drying out which is a risk because this is a dry dough if we hadn't kneaded in a lot of flour into the dough if this dough is still really wet it would be liable to break during the stretching process or the dipping process which we do next okay so let's take a time out and let's talk through the scary parts so this is sodium hydroxide AKA caustic soda food grade you can buy this on the internet look for the food grade kind this is a caustic Alkali this can absolutely give you a chemical burn and you need to be respectful of it however over keep in mind that what we're doing here is something that generations of German grandmas have done themselves at home for a long time and they're not worse for wear first thing you'll want to do is put on some latex gloves these I got from the cleaning section of the grocery store not the food section these are made to deal with caustic Solutions used for cleaning so it's what you want you don't want like the food service gloves that have the little holes in them so that your skin can breathe obviously a bad idea here we're going to mix our caustic soda with water to create a solution known as lye and when we do that an exothermic reaction is going to occur meaning it's going to create heat when we mix this with water so ideally you want to do that in kind of a heat safe non-reactive vessel like so heat safe Pyrex that is to say the Pyrex that's sold for baking not just for storage is kind of the ideal situation here so we'll do that then I've got five cups or that's a 1.2 liters of water by the way when I say this dish is non-reactive what I mean is it's unlikely to corrode upon contact with strong bases or acids the way Metals would and into that I'm going to dissolve one quarter cup or about 70 grams of sodium hydroxide and I'm going to slowly sprinkle it in while I stir because otherwise it has a tendency to cake and then it's just hard to dissolve plus this is probably safer I'm just following the proportions given for pretzels on the back of this bottle by the way do not touch that powder you've seen Fight Club right now what's interesting is the sides of this dish are actually kind of warm now that's how exothermic this reaction is now people have traditionally done this without gloves right because pretzels predate latex gloves I'm not saying people would have touched the lie but they would have used tools to dip the pretzels in and out of the lye bath it's really much easier to use your hands now in the era of gloves but what if something goes wrong what if it touches your skin well what I'm going to do is I'm going to give myself a minor chemical burn on the inside of my arm right here I'm just going to let that sit there for I don't know one two three four five six seven eight nine ten seconds now I'm gonna go wash this off four hours later that patch of skin is slightly more pale it itched a tiny bit and felt slightly warm and now it's already back to normal this just isn't that concentrated of a caustic solution try not to get it on your skin but if you do and you wash it off promptly you're probably going to be fine what's funny is that in this timeline I have no idea how this actually panned out for all I know I'm dead now but let's presume that people are actually going to see this and that I survived so what I'm going to do is just grab the pretzel right dip it into the bath the dough will probably float a bit you can either spoon lie over the top or give it a flip we'll soak each one for 10 or 20 seconds the hydroxide gelatinizes the surface of the dough making it smooth and shiny and allowing the outside to Brown much faster and therefore deeper in the oven you do not have to rinse these you do not have to boil them and in that sense they are easier than the baking soda based pretzel recipes you may have seen from the likes of me I find the safest way to get these out is to gather them up between your two hands the pretzel won't stretch this way drain thoroughly or you risk these coming out of the oven a little wet check out how the color has changed it's yellowish now I will sprinkle on my favorite finishing salt which is Malden smoked sea salt not an ad but use any big crunchy salt you want I am being liberal with the salt because the pretzels are going to expand in the oven thus spreading out the salt if you want you can slash the belly very traditional this helps the belly expand more in the oven thus making it puffier with my oven 450 fahren height 230c is good but that's on the high side for pretzels your oven might do better at a lower temperature the pretzels are done when they're just deep Brown all over this took 15 minutes and the Hazardous hydroxide is gone it reacts with the dough and or the carbon dioxide in the hot air and it becomes baking soda harmless though you might risk having a little unreacted hydroxide in pools if you don't drain the pretzels really well wow look at the blistering on those and you'll get a smoother skin if you move these from the lye to the oven pretty quickly I was filming and that slowed me down you don't want to rush when working with real lie which you need to dispose of now I'm going to get my faucet running into my sink and then slowly pour this down the drain being careful to not splash the running water will dilute the lye and make it safer as it travels through the pipes though this is essentially weak drain cleaner and people send drain cleaner down the pipes all the time plus sodium hydroxide is often used to treat Wastewater mmm mustard the effort is a hundred percent worth it to get real pretzels freshly baked in your home there's nothing like bread straight from the oven ooh crispy that part

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 519,408

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Id: VszuPoFKxdQ

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 02 2023