-The dough actually kind
of feels like Play-Doh.
It's, like, really happy
to become a pretzel.
[ Laughs ]
♪♪
I'm Zoe, and I'm the head baker
at Simon & The Whale and Studio
in the Freehand Hotel,
and we are going
to make soft pretzels.
♪♪
The first thing we'll do
is start with the dough.
So we'll start with cool water.
We're using honey
as the sweetener in this dough.
I would say a good sub would be,
also, brown sugar.
We're going to do one egg
and one yolk.
Those are our wet ingredients.
Next is going to be dry.
This is unbleached bread flour,
a little rye, our salt.
This is instant yeast.
The instant yeast behaves well
in high-sugar
and high-fat environments.
So the pretzel dough
is enriched with butter.
It also has a decent amount
of sugar for sweetness,
so the instant yeast
does a better job
at rising doughs
with those components.
And then we have 1/2-inch diced,
not fully softened butter,
but maybe 30 minutes
out of the fridge.
We're going to start
on low speed for 2 minutes.
We are initially looking
for the dough
just to come together
into a shaggy mass on low speed.
Some of the butter chunks
will still be in there.
They won't be broken up yet.
That's fine.
Then once we kick it up
to medium speed,
that's when we're actually
going to start
developing the structure
of the dough
and incorporating
the butter into it.
Rye flour is one
of my favorites,
and it's used in a lot
of German baking,
and pretzels are originally
from Germany,
so we tied it in that way.
So we're looking for a,
like, thin,
"deeply caramelized
from the lye"
crackly shell that's, like,
encrusted with salt
and then
a buttery soft interior.
Okay, so now we're going to
kick it up
to medium speed for 4 minutes.
I grew up competitive figure
skating,
so I was at the mall
all the time
because that's where
the rink was,
so that's why I ate so many,
like, Auntie Anne's growing up.
I needed to, like, carb-load
to get prepared for my practice.
Our dough is finished mixing.
It's started to snake up
the hook of the machine,
and so that's a good sign
that our structure
is beginning to develop.
It's still really sticky,
but once it chills,
the dough is going to firm up.
We are going to spray this bowl.
♪♪
Wrapping it.
I'm going to chill the dough now
for 4 hours
and, ideally, overnight.
♪♪
This is the dough
that's been chilled,
and now we're going to
divide it and preshape it.
The way that I dusted
the surface is so fabulous
is because you're actually
using your wrist
to, like, disperse the flour
in a really even and thin layer,
so we're trying
not to incorporate
too much additional flour
into the dough in the process
of diving and shaping it.
I'm fabulous for a reason.
Now I'm dividing this
into 90-gram pieces,
and I'm trying to retain them
into a relative-square shape
because ultimately these
are going to become logs,
and if they're already
starting out as square,
then they're going to be more
willing to achieve that shape.
Okay, so I'm going to do a
little more flour, not too much,
and then I'm just going to
flatten out my piece of dough
and roll it up into a little log
and going about 5 inches.
It doesn't need to be exact.
This is just to introduce
the shape.
The reason why you want
to chill them now is because
we're going to roll
these into really long ropes
which works the dough a lot,
so we want the gluten
in the dough to have a chance
to relax before we ask it
to extend to a superlong length.
♪♪
These have been chilling
for about 15 minutes.
Rolling out on either side
of this 1-inch section
in the middle,
initially I want to form
this little belly at the center
that's going to become
the bottom of my pretzel.
So I'm rolling with quite a bit
of pressure
and slowly moving my hands
towards the ends.
I'm going to taper it slightly
at the ends,
which is just making
the ends a little pointy.
Right now I'm at about
25 inches which is good.
There's a fast way to shape
and a slow way to shape.
I think it takes a little bit
of practice
to get the fast way down.
So I'm going to take both ends,
and then I'm going to pull
the pretzel into the air,
twist it and throw it
back down on the table.
So I'm going to start
with a double twist
and then bring the ends to
the side and pin them down here,
and then I'm going
to gently transfer
that over
to my baking tray.
Okay, so now we're going to do
the slow way which is,
once I have my rope,
I'm going to bring the belly
down and form this U shape.
Take the ends.
Twist them over twice,
and then bring this down
to the sides here,
and just one point on the belly.
So the reason why we want
to keep
that thicker part on the bottom
is because one of the best parts
of a pretzel is the,
like, variation
in textures that you get.
So we tapered the ends and got
these thinner parts here.
Those are going to bake up
to be crispy in the oven,
and then this belly
that we formed
that kept it
a little bit thicker,
that's going to be
the fluffiest part,
so then when you're eating it,
you get each of those
different bites.
And once I get it on the tray,
I want to correct the shape
a little bit.
Any part that got distorted
when I was transferring it,
the way that it lands
on this tray
is going to be the final shape
because after this point,
we freeze them
before we dip and bake,
so make sure that you
correct them at this point.
Put a little plastic
wrap on top,
and pop them into the freezer
until they're semifrozen.
While we're waiting for
the pretzels to freeze,
we are going to mix up
the lye solution.
The solution is made with water
and sodium hydroxide, or lye.
It's a caustic-alkaline
solution.
It's extremely acidic.
That's what gives the pretzel
the, like, super shiny
and flavorful caramelized crust.
I'm going to pour
in the water first.
This is just room-temperature
water.
You definitely want to wear
latex or rubber gloves
when you're doing this because
if the lye gets onto your skin,
it will burn you instantly.
I'm going to just agitate
the water a little bit
and start dissolving
the lye as I shear it in.
So if you didn't have access
to lye,
you could substitute
baking soda,
which isn't quite as acidic but
will have a similar reaction.
Intensify the acidity in the
baking soda by baking it
in the oven, just on a sheet
tray, for about an hour,
and then you can do
the same process
with the condensed
baking soda.
It does improve the browning
reaction on the crust,
but it's not quite as flavorful.
Let's check that
it's completely dissolved,
and I think we're there.
I'm going to dip my semifrozen
pretzel into the lye solution
for about 10 seconds.
As it sits in there,
you'll notice it starts
to turn a little yellow
on the exterior.
That's all of the starches
in the dough
dissolving from
the extreme acidity.
Once the pretzels go into
the oven, the lye is,
like, neutralized,
so it's fine to eat.
Now that all my pretzels
are dipped,
they have a nice,
like, sticky exterior,
and that's when you want
to salt them.
So I'm using a nice crunchy
gray sea salt here.
It gets super, super crisp
and crunchy in the oven,
and I want to make sure
to get a really nice coating.
There's nothing more sad than
a, like, undersalted pretzel.
And now we'll put it
in the oven.
♪♪
So how you dispose
of the lye solution
is you pour it down your drain
for a little double-duty
drain cleaning.
Beauties!
And just like that,
presto pretzel.
This is our miso honey mustard.
Got a little black sesame
seed in there.
Oh, yeah.
So for my tapered ends, like,
little bit of crunch.
If you tear into the bottom,
the belly, you get, like,
super fluffy,
almost, like, feathery dough.
The flavor from the lye dip is,
like, it's, like, addictive.
It took us a few steps
to get here.
We made the dough,
chilled it a couple times.
We shaped it, but in the end,
eating a, like,
fresh pretzel baked
in your home kitchen
is, like,
the greatest payoff of all time.
For the recipe, click the link
in the description below.
♪♪
♪♪
