Hot Buttered Pretzels

Pretzels! Yum! Enough said!

Oh wait.. you want me to blog too? Wait, I am busy eating my third buttery pretzel! I have gained 2 lbs just sitting here. There! Licking my fingers and ready to type.  I tried a recipe for pretzels last week from all recipes.  It was their top rated recipe and I was hopeful, but it did not turn out right.  The dough was dry, but to be completely honest, I cannot be sure that it was not my error, because the yeast was past its expiration date too.  The pretzels tasted okay. but I was not completely happy with the texture.. armed with fresh yeast in hand, I went on my quest to find a good pretzel recipe.  I have a nice thick cookbook from the King Arthur Flour Company and in it I discovered a recipe called Hot Buttered Pretzels. (p 229 The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook) LINK

I doubled the recipe.

Hot Buttered Pretzels

Yield: 16 palm sized pretzels

adapted from The King Arthur Flour Company Bakers Companion pg 229

Dough:

• 5 cups all purpose unbleached flour (King Arthur Brand of course)
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp sugar
• 4 1/2 tsp instant yeast
• 1 3/4-2 cups warm water

Topping:

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tsp sugar
• coarse, kosher salt
• 6 Tbsp salted butter, melted

Preparation:

In your kitchen aid stand mixer, combine the ingredients listed under dough.  Use a dough hook to knead the dough for about 5 minutes.  You may need to dust the dough with a teaspoon of flour if it is sticking to the sides of the bowl.  Scrape the dough off the dough hook and remove the hook.  Dust the dough with a pinch of flour so it does not stick to the bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.  Allow to sit for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 500F (for my oven that was a little hot and the tips of the pretzels burned, so I reduced the temperature to 475F and the results were better).  I prepared the pans with my favorite silicone mats.  These are an excellent investment as the bottoms of items I bake do not burn.  You can also line your cookie sheets with parchment paper if you do not have silicone mats.

Divide the dough into 16 equal sized balls of dough.  Spray a casserole dish with cooking spray or grease lightly with cooking oil and place the balls of dough in the dish.  Turn to coat them with the oil.  Allow to sit for 10 minutes.

Take one small ball of dough and begin to roll it out into a 18 inch long snake.

Dissolve 2 teaspoons of sugar in the cup of water and dip the string of dough into the water and form them into a pretzel.  Place the pretzel on your cookie sheet (I could fit 8 on my large cookie sheet). Sprinkle the pretzel with a little coarse salt.  Allow to rest 10 minutes before you put them in the oven.  Bake at 500 (or 475 in my case) for 8-9 minutes, rotating the pans half way through cooking time. After removing them from the oven, brush the tops with the melted butter.  I brushed each pretzel 2 times with the butter.  You really want the buttery taste to get on the pretzel.

My family loved the result of this recipe.  I will be making them again, even though I do not bake often.  These are worth the time!  And by the way, they are better and cheaper than the ones I can get at the mall.

Printable Recipe

 

 

Magic of Ammonia

I discovered Pinterest a few months ago and no one has seen or heard from me since.  One of the pins that I saw suggested placing grimy disgusting looking stove top burner grates in a bag with a 1/2 cup of ammonia overnight (outdoors to prevent fumes) and the dirt and grime is more easily cleaned… I have spent hours in the past trying to remove some of that crud from mine that I have very badly abused… and had given up on, to the point of almost buying replacement grates, as one year I allowed orange marmalade that I was making to boil over onto the burners and had left a scorched spot on my burner plate as well.  I tried this ammonia in a bag (a garbage bag will do the trick – I happened to have 2 gallon size zip-lock freezer bags that did the trick) and you don’t need to submerge them in ammonia it is the fumes that actually do the loosening up of grime.  I hesitate to post the before picture because.. well how could I let my burner grate get this bad?  I did have to use some steel wool to get the serious spots off, but that is because mine were so bad, – but if yours look that bad, there is hope! 🙂 (and I am not alone, but you don’t have to humiliate yourself publicly like I am doing! Hehe) The results speak for themselves:

Before

After