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Garlic Soft Pretzels

food
5
food
80 mins
bread
side dish

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by Natasha
Published on 31 October 2022
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Bread comes in all shapes, sizes and flavours. However, one of the most common bread consumed for many centuries is the pretzel, most notably, soft pretzels.

The Origins of the Pretzel

Originating from Germany, the pretzel is a type of baked bread that is most known for its knot shape. In German, it’s called “Brezel”, which came from the Latin word bracellus meaning “bracelet” in english, thus describing its shape.

Even though they originated in Germany, they have made their way throughout the world such as France, the United States, and other parts of the world through German immigrants. So now, each country has its take and twists on the German pretzel.

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Making My Own Pretzel Recipe

I grew up eating soft pretzels at baseball games and carnivals at the local park, as well as the famous Auntie Anne’s brand. I wanted to recreate that in today’s Pretzels recipe but with a better-looking and better-tasting one of course.

When it comes to the flavour of a soft pretzel, you can never go wrong with an original salty flavour, but I wanted to add more flavour and what better way than to have a garlic soft pretzel?

The Auntie Anne’s soft pretzels that you get at the local mall are pretty dull looking, they’re pale in colour as well as a very bland shape. So today I will show you a simple trick to get that golden brown crust colour throughout your pretzel, as well as achieving that amazing soft pretzel shape.

The perfect golden coloured pretzel

The way to obtain this colour is to blanch the pretzel dough into a baking soda water mixture. Once you blanch it, you also need to brush the dough thoroughly with some egg yolk to ensure the golden colour on your pretzel.

The best shape for pretzel

To shape our pretzel better, I prefer the sort-of big, hefty-looking soft pretzels compared to the slim, one-sized ones. So to achieve this appearance, you have to roll the dough into a rope but make sure that the ends are slimmer than the centre. Thus, when you shape it into a knot, it will have that much thicker look.

So what are you waiting for? Let’s get to baking and I’m sure you will never want to buy at a store again!

Some tips that might be useful:

  • We dip them in a baking soda water bath to make the dough chewy and add more browning to its appearance.
  • You can shape it however you like (shape it into a stick, bites, etc.), but this is the basic pretzel shape that I am showing in this recipe.

Some terms you might need to know:

Garlic Soft Pretzels

by Natasha
servings
4 people
prep time
20 mins
dish type
Bread
cook time
60 mins
course
Side dish
total time
80 mins

ingredients

  • for pretzel dough

    • 4 gramyeast
    • 120 mlwater(lukewarm, around 100c)
    • 210 grambread flour
    • 2 tspcastor sugar
    • 4 gramsalt
    • 8 gramunsalted butter(room temp.)
  • for glazing

    • 10 gramsalted butter
    • 5 gramfresh parsley
    • 5 gramgarlic cloves
  • Extra ingredients

    • 5 gramunsalted butter(in room temperature, used for brushing bowl, as needed)
    • 165 mlwater(for blanching)
    • 10 grambaking soda(for blanching)
    • 1 pc(s)beaten egg yolk(as needed)
    • 1 pinch(es)flaky salt(as needed, for sprinkle)

instructions

Making the pretzel dough

  1. Mix the yeast and sugar with the lukewarm water (around 100 C) and let it sit for 10 mins.
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  2. In a bowl, mix bread flour and salt together. This will be the dry ingredients.
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  3. Add the yeast mixture to the dry ingredients and mix everything with a spatula until it comes together as a dough.
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  4. Knead the dough for a good 10 mins. or until smooth.
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  5. Add the unsalted butter to the dough and knead it until it comes together as a dough and shape dough into a ball.
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  6. Brush some unsalted butter (for brushing) onto an empty bowl.
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  7. Add dough to the greased bowl and cover with some cling wrap. Let it rest for 1 hour.
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Making the garlic butter

  1. Take your garlic clove and fresh parsley, roughly chop them up into small pieces.
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  2. Melt the salted butter in the microwave at 800 watts for 30 seconds or until fully melted.
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  3. Add the chopped garlic and parsley into the melted butter, mix everything with a spoon. Set it aside.
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Continue to make the pretzel

  1. Degas the dough by lightly punching the gas out of the dough.
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  2. Weigh the dough and divide it into 4 equal pieces.
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  3. Shape each dough into a ball and cover with some plastic wrap. Let it rest for 10 mins.
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  4. Degas each dough by flattening out the dough with your hands.
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  5. Shape the dough by rolling the dough out to a rope, making sure that the ends are more slim than the middle of the dough. Take the dough and shape it into a pretzel.
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  6. Add dough to a pan and cover with some cling wrap. Let it rest for 30 mins.
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  7. In a saucepan, add water and baking soda. Let it come to a boil. Turn the heat off.
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  8. Add the pretzel dough one at a time leaving them for 10 seconds on each side.
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  9. Prepare a cooling rack and drain the excess water on the dough.
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  10. Preheat the oven to 220 C.
  11. Place the drenched pretzel dough onto a baking pan lined with baking paper/mat.
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  12. Brush each dough thoroughly on all sides with some egg yolk and sprinkle some flaky salt on top.
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  13. Bake the pretzels for 10-15 mins. or until golden brown.
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  14. Immediately out of the oven, brush with the garlic butter you’ve made earlier thoroughly on all sides of the pretzel.
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  15. Now enjoy these with some iced tea, soda or any refreshing drink of choice!

bread
side dish
bread
garlic
soft pretzels