Week Seventeen: Pretzels

(This week’s recipe came from “Good Housekeeping’s Great Baking” cookbook.)

This week I decided to try something that wasn’t sweet. I’ve always been a fan of soft pretzels, and the recipe didn’t seem too complicated. But as I was looking at it, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what made it a pretzel versus a twisted breadstick. I soon found out.

The recipe started with warm water, sugar and yeast, which was left alone for five minutes to get frothy:

Then, flour and salt were added and stirred in:

This was gathered into a ball and put in a greased bowl to rise for 30 minutes. Once it had risen, it was turned out onto a floured surface and kneaded a bit:

The dough was then divided into pieces and formed into the familiar pretzel shapes. Baking soda and water were whisked together and each pretzel was dunked into the mixture. They were then placed on a greased baking sheet and coarse salt was sprinkled over them:

The pretzels were then baked for about 17 minutes, rotated once during baking. When the timer went off, they came out looking like this:

It worked! And they actually tasted like pretzels! That little dip they took in the baking soda and water mixture is what turned them brown and made them taste like pretzels. The pretzel in the photo that is white is one that I missed when I was dunking them. And it baked just fine, but tasted more like bread than a pretzel.

My only issue with the pretzels was that they didn’t hold up so well the next day. These are definitely a bake-n-eat on the same day kind of baked good. But man they were good that evening.

Stay tuned for next week. I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be making yet. Rob and I just got back in this evening from a wedding in New York and I haven’t had a chance to pour over my cookbooks yet!