Sourdough Soft Pretzels
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Ingredients
- 3/4 cup lukewarm water*
- 1 cup unfed sourdough starter, straight from the refrigerator
- 3 cups Hi-Gluten Flour* or All-Purpose Flour
- 1/4 cup Baker’s Special Dry Milk or nonfat dry milk
- 2 tablespoons (1/2 ounce) non-diastatic malt powder or 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1 tablespoon butter or vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 2 teaspoons instant yeast
- *Add an additional 2 tablespoons water if using high-gluten flour.
Instructions
- Mix and knead the dough ingredients in a stand mixer using a dough hook to make a cohesive, fairly smooth dough. It should be slightly sticky; if it seems dry, knead in an additional tablespoon or two of water.
- Cover the dough and let it rest for 45 minutes. It will rise minimally. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.
- Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased work surface (DO NOT ADD FLOUR!), fold it over a few times to gently deflate it, then divide it into 8 pieces. -We like bigger pretzels
- Roll each piece of dough into an 18″ rope. Shape each rope into a pretzel.
- Dissolve the malt in the water. Brush the pretzels with the solution, and sprinkle lightly with coarse pretzel salt.
- Bake the pretzels for 20 minutes.
- Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush with melted butter.
- Return to the oven and bake for 5-10 minutes or until they are a nice golden brown color.
Notes
Recipe inspired by King Arthur Flour:
If you want to make shape the pretzels but not bake them right away, shape them and lay on a parchment lined pan. Place the entire pan in the freezer until frozen. Remove from tray and place in sealed bag. To bake them, simple preheat the oven, brush the frozen pretzel with the malted water, add the salt and bake normally. No additional time is needed.
If you wanted to, you could really mix this recipe up by adding pepperoni, cheese, veggies, etc to the dough do this… Roll out a piece of dough into a long rope and flatten. Line with slivers of pepperoni slices and shredded mozzarella cheese. Pinch the sides of dough together encasing the filling in the dough. Form into the pretzel shape.
You could add chocolate pieces too! How about seafood stuffed
pretzels?!