Homemade Soft Pretzels

Dough
  • 2 Cups Bread Flour
  • 3/4 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
  • 1 Tbsp Canola Oil
  • 1/2 Tsp Salt
  • 1 Tbsp Honey
  • 1 Cup Warm Water
  • 1 Packet Yeast
    •  Dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Then mix all the dough ingredients together. Knead until you have nice doughy dough, adding a small amount of water/flour if the dough stays too dry/sticky.
    Divide the dough into 16 balls. Form each ball into a pretzel (roll into a long thin (1" diameter) rope between your hands, twist the ends together then fold the twist down to the other side). Leave 1-2 hours to rise.
    Heat over to 475 F. Prepare a greased baking sheet* (see below). Boil 4 Cups of water in a deep pan and dissolve 5 tbsp of baking soda in the boiling water.
    For each pretzel, place it in the boiling water. It will expand some. When it floats up (about 30 seconds), gently transfer to the baking sheet with a spatula. Sprinkle with coarse salt (add salt right after moving the pretzel to the pan, while it's still wet).
    Bake for 9 minutes.

    Pretzel Dogs


    Instead of rolling the dough into twists, make pretzel dogs. Take 1/8 of the dough (2 pretzels-worth), roll into a long thin rope, then coil it around a hotdog, brat or other cooked link sausage. Dunk in boiling soda-water as above. Cook for 10 minutes instead of 9. Very tasty.
    * - Warning, cooked pretzels will tear the teflon off of cheap or old non-stick baking sheets. We line our sheets with foil first, which is easier to pull off than teflon (and stops the pan from being ruined). If anyone has a technique for countering this pan-pretzel fusion, please let me know.