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.
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: