Edited to add lots and lots more photos and video.
And this recipe is now up on the boards.ie cooking club!
I love pretzels – the large, soft, chewy kind, not the breakfast cereal wannabe crunchy things – but the only place I can buy them round here seems to be Marks&Spencer’s bakery and they don’t even sprinkle them with salt (there’s a fantastic shop that sells them in Kilkenny in the upper floor of the Market Cross shopping center on the main street, but none round here). The other day, I went into M&S to buy some only to find they had none, but instead had taken the dough and made rolls with them. And they were great. And less futzing about is needed to shape the dough, so why not? I put together a decent recipe using a few online recipes and Alton Brown’s good eats episode:
Ingredients 
For the dough:
- 1 pkg fast-action yeast (ie. the only kind you find on Irish shop shelves)
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 cup warm milk
- 3/4 cup warm water
- 1.5 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 cup bread flour
- 2.5-3 cups plain cream flour
For the alkali bath:
- 3 litres water
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1/2 cup bread soda
And you need coarse salt, poppy seeds or sesame seeds for sprinkling. Unless you want to make baldies (which aren’t horrible, but really, you’ll prefer these with toppings, and I personally prefer the sesame seeds myself). Continue reading →
