2021 Baking Challenge Part 3: GETTING TWISTED UP

The end of March was equal parts busy and relaxing since I was prepping for then went on vacation. I found time to make the pretzels but not to write up my baking challenge for the month. I am hoping that in April I will be able to catch up and get back on track.

I have planned the year so that I alternate between sweet treat and salty snack. March was PRETZELS! I have always loved a good pretzel – the skinny, crunchy kind or the fluffy, chewy ones from a concession or food court. I love that they are so adaptable. I love to dip them in mustard, cheese sauce, chocolate, or nutella. I equally love the honey wheat twists or the pure (lightly) salted kind. They bring back memories of going to a concert, sports game, or amusement park with friends and family. They seemed like a perfect recipe to try for a month where I was reflecting on a whole year of the pandemic/quarantine.

Back in January, I watched the Magnolia Table episode where Joanna Gaines made the pretzels from her cookbook and they seemed relatively easy (as compared to a bread that calls for two proofs, the pretzels only needed one hour long one) and fun to make. Last month, I followed the recipe for the eclairs exactly and since Pete and I aren’t seeing many people, we had too many eclairs to enjoy. For the pretzels, I halved the recipe to make it a little more manageable for us.

The first step to making the pretzels is getting the yeast, water, and sugar in a bowl to start blooming. To halve the recipe, I only used one packet of active yeast, 1/2 teaspoon of sugar, and just a little more than 3/4 cup of lukewarm water. The next step was combining the dry ingredients which included 2.5. cups of flour, 1/4 cup of sugar, and 1 teaspoon of salt. Once the yeast bloomed, I mixed it with the dry ingredients until the dough became a smooth ball.

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I sprayed a glass bowl with oil spray and put the the dough into the bowl and covered it with plastic wrap. For an hour, I allowed the dough to rise to be about double in size.

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Once the pretzels were shaped, the next step that makes a pretzel a pretzel, is to place them in a baking soda and water bath. I combined 2 cups of boiling water with just under a 1/4 cup of baking soda and dunked the pretzel shaped dough. They came out looking a little wrinkly and I placed them on the prepared baking sheets. I sprinkled a little bit of salt on each and they baked for 8-10 minutes .

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It was fun to look in the oven and have the pretzels look more like actual pretzels you would buy at a food court or concession stand. Once they were out of the oven, I brushed the tops with melted butter and prepped a little bit of mustard and cheese dip (I just used a dip from the grocery but one day I’ll make a homemade version that will taste better).

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I was definitely happy with the taste of the pretzels but I will say the texture was different than I expected. The inside was spot on – it was soft and a little bread-like – but I am used to a little bit of a crunch or crispiness to the outside of a pretzel, and I don’t think these had that. I’m not entirely sure what would cause that (it could just be the weirdness of festival/concert venue food). Maybe they should have stayed in the baking soda and water mixture a little longer or baked in the oven for a minute or two more? If you have any suggestions, please let me know. Either way, I will definitely be making these again because of how simple and fun they were to make and how tasty they were. Let me know if you try the recipe I used and how they turned out or if you have a recipe you think I should try(pretzel or not!!).

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