I don’t know about you, but I have a thing for soft pretzels. That distinctive dark, glossy crust actually comes from a happy kitchen accident: legend has it a Munich baker once meant to brush his pretzels with sugar water but grabbed the lye solution used to clean the bakery counters instead. Rather than toss the batch, he baked them anyway and stumbled onto the deep brown, chewy crust that’s become the pretzel’s signature.
So what if we took that flavor and shaped it into buns you could use for sandwiches or even hamburgers? That same crust holds up beautifully even once you slice the bun open. Friends, please follow along, this recipe is easy and tasty.
(Experiment 149)Pretzel buns
Ingredients
- 300 g have an extra 60g at hand
- 3.5 gr instant dry yeast
- 1 cup warm water around 110F
- 30 gr melted butter
- 4 gr sea salt
- 1 egg
- 3/4 cup baking soda
Instructions
- In a stand mixer bowl put the water and yeast, whisk and let bloom for 10 minutes. Turn the stand mixer on with the dough attachment over low speed and add the butter and salt.
- Add about half the flour, then slowly add more. The dough texture should not be dry nor very sticky. Add flour until you get that texture, it may be a bit more or less than 300g.
- Dump on a work surface and cut in 6 pieces and turn them into balls. Cover with a clean dishcloth and let bulk for an hour.
- Pre-heat oven at 450F.
- Once it has bulked, take a large pot and put about 4 litres of water with the baking soda and bring to a boil. Put each ball in for about 30 seconds on each side, if your pot is big you can do 2 at the same time.
- Put them on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Beat the egg with a little bit of water and brush your dough balls. At this point, it’s a good idea to score your dough ball so you can control where it “burst”. The traditional way is to simply score them in an X pattern.
- Bake for about 15 minutes
