German-style soft pretzels — no lye

yes real german-style soft pretzels are boiled or dipped in lye before they are baked lye sodium hydroxide problem is food grade lye is hard to find and it's legit dangerous to work with you get chemical burns these pretzels I boiled in the next best thing which is sodium carbonate Washing Soda which you can make very easily at home from plain old baking soda I'll show you dough first any dough is fine but this is mine a cup of water 237 mils teaspoon of yeast tablespoon of sugar a tablespoon or two of melted butter or oil purists may get upset about the fat and the sugar but I was raised on Mall pretzels and I refuse to be sorry for who I am a teaspoon of this kosher salt that's not very much but you want the dough to be under seasoned because you're gonna have the salt on top highly optional but I've been using a teaspoon of baking powder in addition to the yeast just for some extra poof in the oven I've seen a few German recipes call for that now I will just stir in as much bread flour as I can stir in with a spoon I increasingly start all of my breads this way it keeps your hands clean for the messiest parts of bread making no more pulling little dried sticky bits out of the hairs on your fingers that's about as much as I can get in I'll cover it with a wet towel and let it autoize for about 20 minutes before proceeding meanwhile baking soda standard sodium bicarbonate just dump a bunch of it into a dry pan and turn the heat on high it's time to boil the water out yes there's water in there see how it starts to Clump as it Heats sodium bicarbonate is not actually sodium bicarbonate that's an old scientific misnomer that just stuck baking soda is actually sodium hydrogen carbonate and when you get it hot the hydrogen and oxygen form water and literally boil off along with some carbon dioxide want to see just wait until it gets really hot and then shake the pan pretty cool huh Harold McGee famously suggested doing this for pretzels some years back and he tells you to bake your baking soda in the oven for an hour at least but it only takes 15 minutes on the stove it's super fun to watch and you can monitor the process better if you overcook this it could start to break down into some less desirable compounds you'll know exactly when it's done whenever you stop seeing little gas geysers you shake the pan or stir it and there's no visible signs of gas anymore when that happens you're done and you can check by weighing it if you really converted your baking soda into Washing Soda then it should weigh a little less than two-thirds of its original weight I started with one pound 454 grams and nailed it let that cool and try not to let it sit on your skin or get in your eyes or anything it's mildly caustic after 20 minutes this dough has autolized it's super stretchy and quite easy to knead now I'll just knead in some more flour pretzel dough is generally on the dry side the dough should be a little tacky but not super sticky that's probably a little too sticky a little more flour there we go just barely sticky I'll cover that up and let it rise until it's soft and fluffy as my mattress from Helix sleep sponsor of this video I've been sleeping on my Helix dusk for well over a year now it's the kind of bed you just want to LEAP into at the end of the day and what's crazy is that it shipped to my house in a box a king-sized mattress in a box Helix sleep makes premium mattresses and bedding that are customized to fit your needs and they're shipped right to your door free in the U.S under vacuum that's a real spring and foam mattress you just break the vacuum seal and it puffs up faster than a pretzel in the oven you hit my link in the description and take their sleep quiz tell them your general size and shape tell them if you're a side sleeper stomach whatever and what level of firmness you like they select the right mattress for your body and they have all kinds of great accessories like the cooling cover it literally keeps 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gotta wait until it's pliable again to shape out the pretzels and I'm still working on this move but the basic idea is you only roll the outer ends I'm trying for a shape that's more swabian than Bavarian the swabian pretzels have thin little arms and fat bellies which means each pretzel has a thick fluffy part and thin crispy Parts heterogeneity you roll the ends and leave the belly in the center alone get the Rope a lot longer than you think you want it because it's going to snap back plus the whole thing is going to puff up a lot so the negative spaces are going to fill in make a U twist the ends fold them over done now I'll let those proof for another half hour after which time they'll be nice and puffy and if you want to make your life really easy here's another non-traditional tip throw them in the freezer not until they're rock hard but until they're firm enough to not fall apart during the boiling phase speaking of which a wide deep pan of water for boiling and a wide deep bowl of water for rinsing heat on high and into the pan goes as much of my water Washing Soda as I can easily dissolve the solution does not have to be fully saturated yes pet ants I know fully saturated is technically redundant you don't want any undissolved calcium carbonate grains hanging out in there because they could stick to the pretzel and they would taste bitter you should see the water go clear after a couple of minutes of stirring and here's why we cooked our baking soda the solution has a pH of 11. that's less than the 13 you'd get with lye but way more than the eight you'd get with regular old baking soda all this extra washing soda I can seal up tight in a non-reactive container and save it's great for making pretzels and for making pretzels the water does not have to be at a rolling boil just real hot here's my nice firm pretzel easy to work with and in the bath it goes the alkalinity and the heat alter the surface of the pretzel such that the mayard reaction will proceed much faster in the oven the pretzel will Brown before the inside is overcooked and dry it'll also get you that smooth shiny surface that defines a pretzel all to me now here's a step that you don't have to do if you use lie you got to rinse the pretzel in fresh water lye breaks down in the oven and you don't taste it but the washing soda would taste bitter if you left it on the surface I'll sprinkle on my salt right now while the pretzel is still wet the moisture is what makes the salt stick some Germans use big chunky salt some use fine salts use whatever you want next one in this is so much easier when the pretzels are really cold I highly recommend that I get cosmetically better results when I boil these for like 10-15 seconds Max any longer and they wrinkle up a lot more they start to fall apart no good wash off that washing soda The Washing Soda solution is mildly caustic but it's not like a lye bath if you get this on your skin it might feel kind of warm you'd probably want to wash it off pretty soon but it's not an instant chemical burn not even close salt on more salt than looks correct because remember the pretzel is going to grow in the oven now when people use lye they often don't even bother heating the water it's just a lukewarm bath that's because the LIE is much stronger and they can leave it on the surface because it breaks down in the oven we need the extra boost of heat to get a similar level of Browning some people also brush on egg wash onto the pretzel just for some extra Browning help I tried that and I got no noticeable benefit it would help if you were just boiling these in baking soda but the washing soda just does a better job and the egg is unnecessary last step is another swabian trick slash the belly score the fat belly of the pretzel so it's free to puff up more in the oven its growth won't be restricted by tight outer skin into a fully preheated oven 425 Fahrenheit 220c at least you can go higher if you want them even darker and crispier here we are like 15 minutes later and they're beautiful just pull them whenever they're brown to your liking no we don't have the dark mahogany crust you get from lye but we also don't have chemical burns all over our hands here's one final trick spray or brush on some water while the pretzels are still really hot the water will set into a glaze and you'll get a shinier look you could even do that one or two times during the baking process for an even more dramatic effect alright I suppose it's a middle ground between a Bavarian and a swabian pretzel inside it's super fluffy and Rich thanks to the butter and sugar one day we'll make a straight up Mall pretzel video I promise if the outer crust is a little too firm for you just know that they'll soften a bit as they sit around and water from the inside migrates out to the crust but I sure like them straight out of the oven where's my mustard

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 442,284

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Id: niv6mtzkW3Q

Length: 9min 29sec (569 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022