Sourdough Pretzels Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to sourdough? ›

The secret to sourdough is simple: water. The more water you add to your dough will affect how open the crumb (bigger holes and softer texture) will be once it's baked.

Sourdough pretzels also have a richer taste than regular pretzels. Plus, they include less gluten than regular pretzels. Sourdough is a healthy carb you can feel good about enjoying!

Make the dough: Mix flour, sourdough starter, water, powdered milk, melted butter, brown sugar, yeast, and salt in a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook until dough comes together. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Add additional water, 1 tablespoon at a time, if dough is dry.

Lye is primarily used to make pretzels, and it's the reason for their unmistakable shiny, mahogany color. To prepare, shaped pretzels are dipped in a lye bath, then baked in the oven. This method can also be used with rolls or buns. Once lye-dipped pretzels are baked, they're totally safe (and delicious!) to eat.

Keeping the lid on for the first part of baking allows steam to expand between the gluten fibers to rise the bread and create a fluffy loaf. Step 4: Remove the lid and bake for an additional 12-14 minutes or until the crust is crispy and golden brown. Once you take the lid off, the bread likely won't rise anymore.

But it's the distinctive "pretzel" flavor that makes this bread extraordinary. That comes from dipping the shaped dough in an alkaline solution — traditionally a small amount of food-grade lye dissolved in water — before baking.

1. Best: Fitjoy Pretzels. Fitjoy pretzels are an all-around great choice, as they have no added sugar, a mere 3g of fat, and even boast a gram of protein.

If kept at room temperature, these sourdough pretzels will reheat nicely in a 350°C (175°C) oven for a few minutes until soft.

A common question - you will find that your soft sourdough pretzels will be too dense if they are not proofed adequately or you've used flour that is too high in protein. Before boiling, they should be lovely and puffy. They should look like little twisted pillows of dough.

Are sourdough pretzels easy to digest? ›

Sourdough Pretzel FAQ:

Yes, most definitely. They are the perfect salty snack. Since the dough is fermented, the vitamins and minerals are more bio-available for your body to absorb, and there is less gluten making them easier to digest.

That said, if sourcing and handling lye isn't for you, you can use a simmering baking soda solution instead. With a pH of roughly 8.3, it reacts less than lye and yields pretzels that are lighter in color and flavor, but the results are still impressive.

The most benign substitute for lye is baking soda. You'll get a little bit of browning and some chew, but don't expect it to taste very pretzel-y. You can also used baked baking soda, which is a stronger alkali than baking soda but not as caustic as lye.

Soft pretzels are just a yeast bread is that formed into a pretzel shape. The one big difference in pretzel making, as opposed to a regular bread, is that pretzels are boiled and then baked. It is the boiling that gives the outside of the pretzel its beautiful golden brown color and uniquely crisp and chewy texture.

The taste of sourdough can be influenced by factors including fermentation time, temperature and flour type, as well as the microbes present in the starter.

Sourdough bread's signature taste comes from friendly bacteria and yeast, which produce flavorful lactic and acetic acids in rising bread dough.