Adventures of the soft pretzel...

Yes, it has been a long time. So long that I can't even remember when I attempted to make soft pretzels. A week ago? Maybe two. I know that it was in the midst of the Phillies excitement because I decided to make pretzels, a truly Philly food, to celebrate the successes of the Phillies. Well, the world series is over and the Phillies are defeated, but I am proud of them. So now, I will post my pretzel adventure.

Let me start my saying the the Philly pretzel is an art form I knew I would not master. It is a thing of beauty and culinary genius. These are not mine. These are the real deal.



But I wanted to try it out. There were missteps, for sure. But it was not a total disaster. I started by putting the yeast in hot water. It was supposed to foam but this is all I got.


So perhaps this had an effect on the final product. I also ran out of regular flour and substituted with whole wheat flour. I think these two things together contributed to a pretzel that was too dense.

I mixed the dough which was kind of fun but also annoyingly messy.



Then I let it rise. I think the yeast was not active enough because it did not rise that much. I also did not have a big bowl so I had to let it rise in a pot while I used the big pot to boil the solution for the next step. So there was not that much room to let it rise.



I then rolled the pretzels and let them rise, which is what the recipe said.
But when I went to transfer the pretzels to the boiling water, they stuck together and the shape was compromised so I needed to re-roll them. This must also have made them too dense.


I boiled the pretzels in baking soda and sugar. This is supposed to make them golden brown and crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

I then had to make the salt stick. I ended up using the dreaded egg.


I hate using eggs. When they are cracked they remind me of a monster.

Please, if anyone knows a substitute sticky substance that actually works, let me know. But for this project, I used this grossness:

After baking, the pretzels did come out nice and golden-brown.

The taste was not horrible but they were just so heavy. Way too dense.


Hopefully I will do better next time. I feel it is my duty as someone from Philly to make a good soft pretzel.