Testing recipes in our Food Lab has a number of perks. A nice Bluetooth speaker I can use to blast whatever music I want. A kitchen vastly bigger than my own. Another: Having lots of eager tasters.
This guarantees that nothing I cook will go to waste, especially when we alert our leftovers Slack channel. It also means I have my own informal focus group. I like to see how quickly a dish disappears and how much each person goes back for. I knew I had hits on my hands based on how my colleagues gobbled up my Pillowy Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls and made the Spicy Chicken Parm disappear seconds after it came off the photo set.
You, dear readers, will be the ultimate arbiters of success, but I think you’re really going to enjoy these Soft Pretzels. Honestly, standards are low when it comes to warm bread — even the test batches I wasn’t 100 percent satisfied with had a way of vanishing. Still, this version is the one I’m backing. People could not stop breaking off pieces, no matter whether they’d vowed to stop.
What was I looking for in a soft pretzel? I wanted a chewy but not too tough — or too tender — dough. Alas, several of the recipes I tried were just pretzel-shaped rolls. I didn’t want a dough that was particularly difficult to put together or work with. It needed to be flavorful enough to be eaten on its own or dipped in mustard. It had to have a darker crust, ideally with a bit of crackle and plenty of salt on top, of course.
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As is often the case, I ended up with a hybrid recipe. The bulk of it was plucked from the Food section archives, thanks to a recipe we ran from King Arthur Flour back in 1996. What I particularly liked about it was the use of a sponge, or starter, which provides an additional boost of yeasty, complex flavor. It’s simply stirred together by hand in a bowl and hangs out on the counter for a few hours, or in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. I found that substituting bread flour for the all-purpose flour helped provide more chew, thanks to the additional gluten-forming protein.
To the KAF backbone, I worked in a few strategies cribbed from Cook’s Country, which made a huge difference in flavor and workability. The biggest improvement was boiling the shaped pretzels in a much more concentrated water-and-baking-soda solution, which gives them their signature color and slightly metallic flavor. (Many professionals rely on caustic lye, but that just wasn’t something I wanted to recommend in a home kitchen.) Another was completely dispensing with the parchment paper that so many recipes called for to both rise and bake the pretzels. I just can’t understand it, because they stuck. Every. Single. Time. Cook’s Country recommends letting the shaped pretzels rise on floured baking sheets and then baking them on greased, salted (brilliant!) sheets. This worked like a charm, as did silicone baking mats, if you have them.
If have made my bagels from three years ago, you’ll already feel comfortable with this recipe. Either way, don’t be intimidated. The process requires more time than special skills or equipment. Rolling and shaping the pretzels might take a little practice, but since there are a dozen, you just might master it by the time you finish the batch. And if a few of them are misshapen, even a little flat? If my friends here are any indication, it won’t matter one bit.
Recipe notes: Barley malt syrup is a dark, thick and sticky syrup that provides sweetness and color to the pretzels. Eden Foods brand is available at some natural food and grocery stores, such as certain Whole Foods (though not in the Washington area), or online. Some brewing supply stores, such as myLocal HomeBrew Shop in Falls Church, also sell malt syrup, which is a slightly different formulation but should work fine in this recipe. If you can’t find the syrup, substitute honey or molasses — or even leave it out — with similar, if not exactly the same, results.
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If you don’t have a stand mixer, the process can be done by hand, but keep in mind that kneading on the counter may take a few additional minutes. This is a somewhat wet and sticky dough. Don’t go overboard, but also don’t be afraid to use additional flour as needed when rolling and shaping.
The sponge (or starter) needs to rise for at least 2 hours on the counter. It can then be refrigerated for up to 2 days. The dough needs to rise on the counter for at least an hour, with the shaped pretzels requiring an additional 20 to 30 minutes of rising time.
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