Auntie Anne’s Pretzel Copycat!

[scottranda]

My kids came home last week from the mall, and they were beaming about something new they tried… Auntie Annie’s pretzels! Well, surely I can make it at home, right?!?!?

i used this recipe:


I try to use recipes I find online that gives it to me in grams, so I know it’s more precise.

The lye bath wasn’t hard to manage. It was my first time using lye.

I screwed up and didn’t grease the parchment paper, so the pretzel dough stuck and I had to reshape them again. Lesson learned!

Full video of the original recipe is here: https://youtu.be/h5TFmN7UZHE

[scottranda]

My shaping needs improvement! But it was my first time trying and they still tasted great!!!

[RonB]

I have given up on making the traditional shape. I either make logs or bites. They are much easier to make, and take up much less room on the baking sheet. I may try the epi shape though - never thought about that...

[scottranda]

Funny enough, I searched the Pit for who has talked about "pretzels" and "lye" and you and SheilaAnn posted about it before. Ron, you said in a previous post you don’t make the pretzel shape anymore, so not surprised to see you make the same comment. Haha. Anyway, Honestly I had no clue what epi pretzel was. Had to look it up. Interesting.

[RonB]

scottranda - not only interesting, but they look great and each bite is easy to pull off.

[SheilaAnn]

I have never done lye, but there is a baking soda version. It works well enough for me. Now I want a pretzel with cheese and mustard.

[holehogg]

They look good especially the good looking ones and if they taste good then that's good.

[Chuck in Charlotte]

I've been making pretzel dough a good bit lately, my recipe uses butter instead of neutral oil. Most often I make rolls for sandwiches, which are awesome with brats, peppers and onions. Since the salt melts after a day I make most of them without salt and bake it on right before we eat. Just remember that lye reacts with aluminum, in large quantities it can be explosive but if even your wet pretzel slides off the parchment paper it will make you wife angry that you ruined the look of her cookie pan.

[scottranda]

I didn’t buy lye to explode anything or conceal bodies 😆 JUST to make pretzels 🥨!!!

Brats on a pretzel roll sounds highly intriguing!

[SheilaAnn]

scottranda brats on a pretzel roll smothered in onions and mustard is life changing. IMHO.

[IowaGirl]

I make soap, so I always have sodium hydroxide (the "lye" used for making pretzels) on hand. You can use a basic bagel or pretzel recipe for making either one, by the way -- they're fairly similar.

Use a 3% lye solution (30 grams NaOH in 1000 grams water, just as called for in Jacob's recipe) for bathing pretzels and a weaker 0.7% lye solution (7 grams NaOH in 1000 grams water) for bagels.

You can get by with using baking soda for pretzels or bagels. It works okay but the flavor is a little different and the bread doesn't brown as deeply as when using NaOH.

A better alternative to baking soda, however, is to bake the baking soda for 1 hour at 250 F / 120 C and use that instead. Heating converts baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) into washing soda (sodium carbonate). Sodium carbonate is a more effective alkali than baking soda, so dipping pretzels or bagels in a washing soda solution gives results closer to what you get if you use NaOH.

Use about 1 tablespoon (sorry don't have a weight, but it doesn't need to be super precise) of washing soda (or baking soda) to 1000 grams / 1 quart / 1 liter of water. Bring the solution to a gentle simmer. Be aware that the liquid might foam briefly as it heats, so watch it carefully and stir down any foaming.

A lye solution (NaOH in water) should not be heated -- it works fine at room temperature as shown in Jacob's video.

[IowaGirl]

Oh, and I suppose if you use washing soda for laundry, you could use that directly for making bagels or pretzels. It's just that baking soda, like Arm and Hammer baking soda sold in the US, is tested to food grade standards. Washing soda for laundry is not tested as stringently and it may also contain things you don't want to eat such as fragrance or anti-caking agents.

[texastweeter]

I thought i was the only person using that trick, lol. Sometimes I cheat, and cut cheap pop biscuits into 1/4th, boil in the washing soda solution, the put on a baking sheet, score the top, and hit with kosher salt before baking. Makes a quick pretzel bite, or use the pieces to make pretzel pigs.

[IowaGirl]

texastweeter -- I'll have to try your pop biscuit trick. Sometimes that indefinable "pretzel flavor" really hits the spot, but official pretzels-made-from-scratch are just too much work.