Ok, so tomorrow there is a brew-off at my school and I have signed up to make pretzels. But when I found out there was already a girl making them, I figured, why not try sour dough? So I've taken the traditional sour dough recipe but changed it a bit:
- 1 1/2 cups warm (110 to 115 degrees F) water
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 2 teaspoons kosher salt
- 1 package active dry yeast
- 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups (I used bread flour. They came out great)
- 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
- Vegetable oil, for pan
- 10 cups water
- 2/3 cup baking soda
- 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
- Pretzel salt (Coarse kosher)
First of all, I basically doubled the recipe (however, I'm not so exact with flour and water...) and I used 3 cups of sour dough starter (like a bagel recipe would require). To take this into account, I used 6 total oz of butter and 5 t kosher sea salt. Actually, now that I'm looking back at the directions, I should probably have only done 5 oz butter. Oh well... a little extra fat won't hurt. I also left the dough a little wetter than a "firm dough" would be (which is what is called for with pretzels) because so far in my experience sough dough likes to be much wetter.
The directions say to boil the pretzels in a baking soda solution and upon further searches I found out that pretzels are traditionally boiled in a lye solution. But why? Being interested in chemistry, I searched the internet, the place with all the answers. It took a while, but I finally found a line from these people who call themselves evil mad scientists (http://www.evilmadscientist.com/index.php?topic=food) that mentioned it helps the pretzels evenly brown. After further inquiries using google scholar, I found a book about snack food processing that will probably have the answer. I've ordered it through iLLiad.
My room mate Aaron came home and suggested that I look in "On Food and Cooking" by Herold McGee (I always forget about this book). And sure enough, the answer: "The alkali conditions created by the lye are ideal for browning reactions, and dark pigments and intense flavor compounds rapidly accumulate. (The lye reacts with carbon dioxide in the oven to form a harmless carbonate.)" Awesome. Thanks Mr. McGee.First step was shaping the pretzels. pretty straightforward as long as there's enough flour surrounding my sticky dough :) Plus, we realized that the thinner the dough the better for a more distinct pretzel shape. We let the pretzels rise for like 2 hours in our kitchen.
And then we got to boil. First I boiled the water and then added the baking soda. The baking soda made such a cool bubble burst when I added it. I guess that was just the dissolving energy? When we added the pretzels and began the process of cooking, the kitchen instantly started smelling of pretzels. Like the ones you get from the frozen package and then bake in the toaster oven... only better.
