Tips for Making Soft Pretzels

Secret: I am totally in love with soft pretzels. I made a batch a little while ago that I just loved so much that I had to take out my DSLR camera and photograph them. That’s how much I adored them. I’ve made quite a few different pretzel recipes over the years, and I think I’ve finally figured out the tricks to make them turn out delicious every time. I’m going to share them with you today. Ready?

The main tips that I think are essential to getting a soft pretzel to taste authentic and insanely good are:

1. Use butter in the dough and brush butter on the pretzels after they’re done baking. Basically…. BUTTER.
2. Boil the pretzels in a bath of baking soda + water before baking them. This gives the pretzels a chewy, pretzley crust.

My current favourite pretzel recipe is this one from Cooking Classy. It’s the one I used to make the pretzels pictured here. The only modification I make is to boil the baking soda + water bath before immersing the pretzels in it. I urge you to give it a try… they’re a little time consuming, but SO DELICIOUS!

I’ve actually started a no white flour and no white sugar diet this past Monday, so my next challenge is to try making pretzels using 100% whole wheat flour. I’ll give that a go and keep you posted with the results.

Happy pretzel making!