Making homemade soft pretzels is easier than you think!
This soft pretzels recipe makes for an awesome snack and creates a deliciously chewy outside and fluffy inside. I'll tell you how to get that chewy outside! 🙂
What's the secret behind those chewy outsides of soft pretzels?
Boil them in water and baking soda before baking in the oven.
That's right… boil them in water with some baking soda and you'll end up having a deliciously chewy outside on your pretzels. It's really not difficult so I really encourage you to try this out and see how it works for you!
Just make sure you that you have your pieces of dough formed in the shapes that you want and throw them in the boiling water one at a time for about 30 seconds. Then lay them out on your baking sheet, brush on a little egg wash and sprinkle with a little sea salt.
Once the soft pretzels come out of the oven they'll have a lovely golden and chewy outside. If you like your pretzels a little darker than the ones I made you can always add a little more to the baking time. 🙂
You can use really any regular pizza dough for this soft pretzels recipe. For this I used 1/2 the recipe for my homemade pizza dough but you could use really any store bought kind as well.
Every time I have a soft pretzel it reminds me of something kind of neat that happened years ago when my then husband and I were back in University – I thought you might be interested so here's my little story.
One week we were watching a whole bunch of those UFO and alien documentaries on TV – you know the ones I'm talking about right? We went to the local mall that week to get some shopping done and there's this soft pretzel stand that's quite popular there.
We weren't planning on stopping for a pretzel that day… no… but we did meet someone unexpected who was purchasing one!
Stanton T. Friedman – the famous Ufologist and nuclear physicist was getting himself a soft pretzel!
We had recognized him since we had just seen him on some of those UFO documentaries. If you're not familiar with him, he's well known for his research on UFOs and Roswell. It turns out that Mr. Friedman lived near us in New Brunswick and this was quite the surprise since Fredericton is not a very large city. We stopped for a minute just to make sure we weren't imagining things or were crazy – he's a very nice guy!
I haven't met too many well known people so I thought that was so neat!
Anyways – Onward to that soft pretzel recipe! 🙂
PrintHomemade Soft Pretzels Recipe
- Yield: 6 big thick pretzels or 12 smaller pretzels 1x
Ingredients
- Pre-made pizza dough or use 1/2 the recipe for my homemade pizza dough
- 8 cups of water
- 2/3 cup baking soda
- 1 egg, beaten
- sea salt – according to taste
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 375°F.
- Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and have ready close by.
- In a large pot on the stove boil the 8 cups of water with baking soda dissolved.
- Divide the dough into equal portions. If you'd like big thick pretzels like the ones in in pictures cut 6 portions. If you'd like smaller or less thick pretzels cut 12 portions.
- Roll out each portion of dough to the desired thickness and into pretzel shapes.
- Drop each pretzel into the boiling water for about 30 seconds. It's best to do this one at a time so you don't have a bunch sticking together.
- Remove the pretzels from the boiling water using tongs or a slotted spoon (I use a little strainer with a handle so I can reach in get it.)
- Lay each pretzel onto the parchment paper.
- Using a pastry brush coat the tops surfaces of the pretzels with the beaten egg.
- Sprinkle with tops of the pretzels with some sea salt. I find that a little of the salt goes a long way.
- Bake the pretzels in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until the outsides are golden.
I always love to hear from my readers so please feel free to leave me a comment in the comment section below! 🙂