I don’t know about you but can one get enough pretzels? I think not. They are one of my favourite snacks. Pretzels just like soft pretzels are bathed in a solution of water & lye. You can use baking soda not bad but it’s impossible to achieve the same taste/texture you get when using lye, it’s just not powerful enough.
You can bake the baking soda to make it more powerful but I don’t like the taste it gives to pretzels. Using lye will also give that nice sheen & dark brown colour to your pretzels.
That being said, to be 100% transparent, while they are good, they are not worth the effort vs store-bought. They taste better but it’s too much work in my opinion for a slightly better product. I’d rather spend the time making soft pretzels instead.
(Experiment 17) Hard pretzels
Ingredients
Dough
- 225 g bread flour
- 245 g all-purpose
- 3 g active dry yeast
- 10 g brown sugar
- 2 g salt
- 1 cup lukewarm water ~110F
- Pretzel salt or coarse salt
Lye solution
- 4 cups water
- 28 g sodium hydroxide aka lye
Instructions
- First, let’s bloom the yeast. Put the sugar, water, and yeast into a standing mixer bowl and whisk. Wait 5-10min
- While you wait, combine the flours and salt in a bowl.
- Add about half the flour mix and knead for 2 minutes in the stand mixer with the dough attachment.
- Add the remaining flour and knead for about 4 minutes. It should be tacky but not sticky
- Lightly oil the inside of a large bowl and dump the dough in it, cover with plastic film or lid. Let it rest for about an hour.
- Line parchment paper in 2 baking tray
- Punch the dough down to degas it.
- Tear a walnut size piece from the dough and roll it to make a long roll. You want to roll it down to the size of a pencil. Bigger than that they will be hard to bite.
- Keep it as a rod, shape it the traditional way or whichever way you want
- Repeat for all the dough.
- Cover the pretzel with a clean dishcloth for 30 minutes
- Remove the dishcloth and put the baking tray in the freezer for 15 minutes. This will make the next step easier.
- Preheat the oven to 300F
- It’s now time to put protection on. Safety first, glove and glasses
- In a stainless, glass or plastic bowl pour the 4 cups of water
- Delicately drop the sodium hydroxide into the water, and gently stir with a plastic/stainless spatula. Do not breathe the fume
- Take the pretzel out of the freezer and dip each of the pretzels in the lye solution for 15-20 seconds. Deposit on the parchment paper in the baking tray we prepared earlier.
- Repeat for all pretzels
- Sprinkle salt on all the pretzels
- Put in the oven and bake for about 40-60 minutes. Check how hard they are after 40 minutes and put them back if more time is needed. The bigger the pretzels the longer it takes.
- Transfer to wire rack and let cool completely
