The Best Homemade Soft Pretzels | Bread Pretzels

Why Make This Recipe

This is the recipe I made many, many times, day after day, at a restaurant. It is loved by A Very Lot of people, including me!

The recipe makes an even dozen bread pretzels, and you can also scale it up to make as many as 48 if your mixer is large enough.

The pretzels bake up with a thin, crackly crust and the perfect pretzel crumb–somehow dense and fluffy at the same time.

The instructions are easy to follow–you basically just toss all the ingredients into your mixer and let it do all the work.

After a bulk rise (all the dough rising at once before scaling it into portions or shaping it), you make twelve ropes of dough, give them the traditional pretzel twist, and then freeze them.

Yes, freeze.

Here’s a pro tip for you:

Freeze your pretzels right after shaping them. You can drop them into the boiling water bath straight from the freezer and move them to your baking pan/s before they thaw all the way. This helps them hold their shape so you don’t have to reform them on the pan. Works every time!

How to Make Soft Pretzels

Traditionally, soft pretzels get a bath in lye water. The high pH of the lye bath is what gives the pretzels their distinct dark color and thin, shiny crust.

These days, most home bakers use a dip in boiling water with baking soda in it. Baking soda still has a relatively high pH but not so high as to be caustic and cause burns.

Here’s what you’ll need to make soft pretzels:

Ingredients

• water: You’ll need water for the dough, for the boiling water bath, plus a little bit to add to your egg wash
• melted butter: Tenderizes the pretzels just a bit and helps to carry flavor. You can substitute vegetable oil if you prefer, but your pretzels will have less flavor
• malt syrup: This is the traditional addition that lends to the authentic taste of these pretzels. If you do not have malt syrup or do not want to purchase it, you can substitute dark corn syrup or even honey
• kosher salt: Regulates the growth of yeast and adds flavor to the dough
• all-purpose flour: provides the bulk of the recipe and enough gluten to make these pretzels nice and chewy. You may substitute bread flour, although you may need to add a touch more water since higher gluten flours are thirstier than lower gluten flours
• active dry yeast: you can substitute instant yeast in the same amount. As long as you know your yeast is alive, there is no need to proof it. You can just add it in with all the rest of the ingredients.
• baking soda: Used in the boiling water bath to raise the pH. This results in the signature dark “pretzel color.”
• egg: You’ll beat an egg together with a bit of water to brush onto the pretzels before baking. This also gives the finishing salt something to adhere to
• finishing salt: Use a coarse grained salt here. Pretzel salt is ideal, but you could also do what we did at the restaurant and use sel gris or even Maldon sea salt

Procedure

In broad strokes, here’s what you’ll do to make your soft pretzel deliciousness:

1. Make the dough
2. Let the dough rise
3. Punch down and shape the pretzels
4. Freeze them until hard
5. Dip them in the boiling water bath then place them on the pan
6. Brush with egg wash, sprinkle on salt (or seeds) of choice
7. Bake, let cool slightly, and enjoy.

It may be helpful to watch this video I made showing how to boil the soft pretzels, brush them with egg wash, sprinkle with salt, and then bake.

Equipment You May Need

• I find that using a bench knife and a kitchen scale is my best bet for cutting bread pretzels that will all be the same size. As a bonus, both are useful for tons of kitchen cutting, scraping, and measuring tasks.
• A silicone basting brush makes short work of applying the egg wash.
• Sheet pans are ideal for baking your pretzels. You will be able to get 6 on each half-sheet pan, so ideally, purchase two.

Helpful Tips

Here are a few tips I learned (some the hard way) over years of making this recipe almost every day:

• Do NOT line your baking pans with parchment. The pretzels will stick to it. Just give each pan a spray with pan spray and you’ll be fine.
• If you want to save your pretzels for baking another day, once they freeze on the sheet pans, feel free to put them all in a zip top freezer bag. They will be fine to boil and bake for up to a month. This is a great make-ahead tip if you want to bake them up for a game day party.
• While the pretzels are best when made fresh, you can reheat them the next day by placing them in a toaster or toaster oven for a couple of minutes.

Bread Pretzel Q & A

Variations

For alternate toppings, consider using your favorite spice blends. For example, an Everything Pretzel sounds like a good idea, and it’s as easy as just sprinkling some Everything seasoning on your pretzels before baking.

Other options include sesame seeds or poppy seeds.

However you vary them, do include some coarse salt in the mix, salt and pretzels just go together.

Although, if you need low-salt pretzels, you may certainly bake them without salt sprinkled onto them.

Serving Suggestions

The perfect pairing for soft pretzels is this beer cheese sauce. It is excellent–a little spicy, a lot cheesy, and hard to stop eating.

Aside from cheese sauce, a nice, whole grain mustard is a classic pairing. I really like this Honey Mustard from Lusty Monk.

Or, if you’re feeling very fancy, you can make your own mustard for dipping.

If you’d like to veer away from the traditional, you could certainly dip them in chili cheese dip or spicy queso. No one would complain about that!

Or go Southern with a combo of pepper jelly and pimento cheese.

If you have questions about this post or recipe, don’t hesitate to get in touch. You can leave a comment on the post and I will get back to you within about 24 hours.

If your question is more urgent, please shoot me an email, and I will respond within 4 hours, unless I’m asleep.

A Note About Measurements

NOTE: Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids.

Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency.

This is the scale I use, love, and recommend. If you’re unsure, please read my post about how to use a food scale.

There you have it, friends. Whether you call them bread pretzels or soft pretzels, I hope you make and enjoy them.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Take care, and have a lovely day.