Homemade soft pretzels: deep brown, with a baking-soda bath
Soft pretzels like the ones from a Bavarian bakery, only from your own oven: a firm yeast dough, ropes twisted into loops, a short dip in boiling water with bicarbonate of soda, and coarse salt. The bath is what gives pretzels their dark, glossy crust and that unmistakable flavour; without it you'd get an ordinary roll in a pretzel shape. Eight pretzels, for mustard, butter or beer.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Kneading 15 min
- Rising 60 min
- Shaping 15 min
- Chilling 30 min
- Soda bath 10 min
- Baking 15 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneKnead a firm dough
Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water with the sugar. Pour into the flour and salt and knead 8 minutes, add the butter and knead 4 minutes more. Pretzel dough is firmer than roll dough, smooth and springy, not sticky at all: that is what lets the ropes hold their shape.
Ingredients: 500 g strong bread flour · 280 ml water · 10 g fresh yeast · 30 g butter · 1 tsp sugar · 2 tsp salt
Firm, smooth, not stickyFirst rise
Shape the dough into a ball and put it in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with a cloth and leave somewhere warm for 60 minutes, until doubled in size.
Roll the ropes
Divide the dough into 8 pieces of about 100 g. Roll each under your palms on an unfloured counter into a rope 60 cm long, thicker in the middle and tapered at the ends. If a rope springs back, set it aside for 2 minutes and return: the gluten needs to relax.
Sixty centimetres, a thick belly, thin endsTwist the pretzels
Lay a rope in a U, cross the ends twice halfway up, then flip them over and press onto the thick belly on both sides. Set the pretzels on a lined tray and put them uncovered in the fridge for 30 minutes: a cold, slightly dried skin doesn't stick in the bath and browns better.
Two twists, ends on the belly, into the fridgeThe soda bath
Heat the oven to 220 °C. In a wide pot bring 2 litres of water to the boil, add the soda (it foams) and lower to a gentle simmer. Dip each pretzel for 20 seconds on a slotted spoon, drain and return to the paper.
Ingredients: 2000 ml water · 3 tbsp bicarbonate of soda · 2 tsp coarse salt
TipAlkaline water changes the proteins and sugars on the dough's surface, so in the oven the Maillard reaction runs faster and deeper: hence the mahogany colour, the gloss and the pretzel flavour. Bakeries use lye, which is much stronger but caustic and dangerous at home. Soda gives a milder but clear effect and is safe to use at home.
Twenty seconds in soda waterSalt and slash
Sprinkle the pretzels with coarse salt and slash the belly of each with a razor in one shallow lengthways cut: it opens in the oven and shows the white inside.
Coarse salt, one cut on the bellyBake
Bake 13–15 minutes at 220 °C, until deep brown and shiny. Pale pretzels are underbaked pretzels: the colour should be deep, like a chestnut's skin. Cool 10 minutes on a rack; best warm, the same day. Refresh stale ones 3 minutes at 200 °C.
Chestnut colour, gloss, salt
Before you start
With cheese
Instead of salt, sprinkle grated hard cheese after the bath: cheese pretzels, a children's favourite.
Pretzel buns
The same dough shaped into 8 balls, bathed, salted, cut in a cross: burger buns with a pretzel crust.
Pale and dull pretzels
Too short a bath, too little soda, or the fridge step skipped. Hold the full 20 seconds, 3 full spoons of soda per 2 litres, and don't skip the chilling.
