Simple Pretzels Recipe 002

Prep

Making the pretzels follows the following steps, batches of less than 25 pretzels per person working on prep should work easily with timing:

Scaling and Mixing:


Depending on how many pretzels need to be made scale the following:
125 g of All-Purpose or Bread flour (per pretzel) vary for larger or smaller pretzels
32% Water
30% Milk
10% Butter (Melted)
2.5% Salt
0.7% dry yeast

(on bigger batches and warm ambient temperature reduce gradually to 0.5% of yeast, to accommodate for faster or longer rising during shaping)
Mix everything for 10 minutes in dough mixer, or by hand.

Divide and roll:


Divide the dough into ~200 grams portions for pretzels and shape them into rolls. Cover dough at all times. Use pizza dough boxes or covered half sheets.

Shape Ropes for Pretzels:


Take at least 4 rolls at a time out of the box, and roll them one-by-one into short cigar-shaped pieces. Make sure that they have a smooth surface. When all rolls are cigar-shaped, take the first one and roll it into ropes of 45cm and store them covered up in the dough box. Depending on the rise, the dough may be resisting, if that’s the case, just let it sit. Very lightly wetting your hands may help the rolling as well, if needed.

Shape Pretzels:


Take at least 4 ropes and roll them to the full 80 cm. Take the first one you expanded fully and shape into a pretzel. Repeat until all the ropes are shaped into pretzels.

Flour bottoms:


To make sure that the pretzels don’t stick when you remove them from refrigeration, bake them and to give them one last finishing touch before you put them into refrigeration, flour the table surface and quickly flour the bottom part of each pretzel. This is also the best time to make sure that all pretzels have exactly the same shape and look great. Brush off excess flour from the top of the pretzels and buns with a pastry brush.

Refrigeration:


Take all your dough boxes or covered half-sheets and place them in a cold fridge (~37F).

Baking

Pretzels are best within about 90 minutes from when they come out of the oven. Refrigeration allows you to keep the pretzels up to 3 days before you bake them.

  1. Preheat oven and prep sheets:
    Preheat the oven to 400.
    Baking pretzels involves Lye, so ideally use stainless steel sheets not aluminum sheets and definitely line them with silicone pads.
  2. Lye bath, Scoring and Salt:
    Lye is highly corrosive and dangerous for skin and eyes. Always wear gloves and protective glasses when you handle the Lye.
    Take pretzels or buns and dip them into the lye bath for about 30s each and put them on the sheets, 4 pretzels or 12 buns per half sheet. Make sure that you don’t drip the lye anywhere.
    Sprinkle some coarse salt on them.
    Use the scoring knife to score the pretzels, to give them smiling lips. Score deep and in one motion.
  3. Baking:
    Insert the sheets into the pre-heated oven and bake for 20 minutes total. After about 8-12 minutes flip all the sheets around in the oven to get the most equal browning.
    If the baking time is up and you feel that the pretzels are still too soft, put them back into the oven for a couple of minutes.
  4. Brush & Cool:
    After taking the pretzels out of the oven put them on the cooling rack and brush them with half-and-half. This will give them the characteristic shine.
    While it is tempting to eat them right away, the pretzels improve if they setup for a little bit and build a more solid internal dough structure, so it is desirable to let them sit for at least 10 minutes before consumption.

Enjoy.

Making and Handling Lye

Baking pretzels requires Lye. Lye is highly corrosive and dangerous. So it is important that you always wear protective gear when you come in touch with Lye. Always make sure that it is in the dedicated plastic container, covered and stored in its dedicated refrigerated space.

If you need to make more Lye add 1 liter of water first and then 40g of Sodium Hydroxide to the solution and carefully stir until it is fully dissolved. The exact measurements are very important.
Lye and Sodium Hydroxide are corrosive and reactive with many materials so it is really important that you use only the approved and labeled containers for anything that touches Lye.