AALiiLOGUE: Soft Pretzels.

Okay, so, I have no idea what the heck I was thinking when I decided to make these.

Can't access Youtube? We have it under control. Alternative at the end of the blog post.

Rarely have we ever had some, so it was a casual thought, out of the blue.
Nonetheless, I decided to make it and Apa was so kind, and excited (mostly because she’d already invited herself to the kitchen so that she could follow me around and stand on stools and basically film everything).

Also, I made these in Ramadan which means that I do not remember anything, I only ever get vague flashbacks of looking at the dough and thinking that my life was over. Lol. What a nightmare.

As I said in the previous Pizza post, the dough can be a challenge. In this case, the recipe tells you to use 4 ½ cups of flour but I ended up using a little more to make the dough feel, and look like dough. So, make sure what dough is supposed to feel like, it’s crucial. But this dough is a bit sticky than normal (check the video out to get a feel).

The recipe is a sort of copy, an adaptation of the pretzel recipe from the blog ‘Yammie’s Noshery’.

I found this because my bestie and I love to bake, and even though she lives all the way in Pakistan, it doesn’t stop us from exchanging recipes every single time we cook or bake. She actually made ‘cheese buns’ from the same blog and loved it. And I stumbled upon this recipe instead and it took my fancy (which is rare).

Now, it’s recipe timeeee!

Ingredients:

Dough:

2 cups milk
1 ½ tablespoons active dry yeast
6 tbsp brown sugar (I didn’t have granulated so I used soft, it worked okay too)
4 tbsp butter , melted
4 ½ cups flour (extra for dusting and add more if needed)
2 tsp fine salt

Baking-soda water mixture:

1/3 cup baking soda
3 cups warm water
Salt to sprinkle (or you can use mustard seeds or sesame if you prefer)

Method:

1. Warm up the milk on the stove for about 90 seconds until warm enough to hold your finger in it without pain. If the milk is too hot, then it will kill the yeast (and you can burn your finger. And we don’t want that, now do we?) then, stir in the yeast and let it sit for about 3 minutes.

2. Mix the butter and sugar into a bowl and add the milk mixture.

3. Add In the flour, one cup at a time and then the salt. Knead for about 10 minutes by hand or a mixer (I used my hands because it’s more fun) until it looks like dough. Put it in a greased bowl and cover it with a greased piece of clingfilm and leave it in a warm place for an hour or so until its double in size (make sure to let it rise properly and do not rush the poor thing.)

4. Preheat the oven to 230’c. And combine the warm water and the baking soda in a wide bowl and leave it nearby.

5. Knock down the dough and divide it into 12 equal lumps ( I made more because I found the little sizes cute).

6. Roll them out as thin as possible and form the dough into a pretzel shape (Google images is very good at teaching that tbh) then dip it into the baking soda water and place on a greased baking sheet and sprinkle with salt (or mustard or sesame seeds).

7. Bake in the oven for 7-11 minutes or until brown, make sure to keep on checking them to make sure they don’t burn (especially if you make them very little).