Soft and Chewy Pretzel Rolls Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret ingredient which makes a pretzel taste like a pretzel? ›

But it's the distinctive "pretzel" flavor that makes this bread extraordinary. That comes from dipping the shaped dough in an alkaline solution — traditionally a small amount of food-grade lye dissolved in water — before baking.

That said, if sourcing and handling lye isn't for you, you can use a simmering baking soda solution instead. With a pH of roughly 8.3, it reacts less than lye and yields pretzels that are lighter in color and flavor, but the results are still impressive.

As noted above, baking soda is a staple ingredient for making homemade pretzels. Dunking your pretzels in a baking soda bath prior to baking is what enables them to develop their distinctive color and crispy-on-the-outside, chewy-on-the-inside texture.

What Gives Pretzels Their Pretzel Flavor? You have baking soda to thank for that distinct pretzel flavor. Baking soda is highly alkaline and imparts that subtly metallic taste onto the dough before your pretzels go into the oven. Some recipes call for a lye bath, which does the same thing.

Lye-dipped pretzels, or in this case, pretzel buns, have a distinctive flavour that is both savoury and slightly bitter. The lye, a strong alkaline solution, is used to give the pretzels their characteristic dark brown colour and chewy exterior.

If your pretzels have any sort of a metallic, bitter taste, it all comes down to the baking soda bath.

Well, the cheery ladies were very clear with me: they do NOT use lye. No sodium hydroxide/poison/caustic soda—none whatsoever—in their pretzels. (They do, however, dip their pretzels in a baking soda solution.) So there you have it.

That is by taking baking soda, spreading it out on a baking pan and putting it into the oven at about 250-300 degrees Fahrenheit for about an hour. That changes the chemical properties in the baking soda to make it behave more similarly to lye.

Carefully sprinkle the lye into the water. Use a heat-safe silicone spatula to carefully stir the lye to dissolve. The lye is dissolved when the water looks clear (the container will feel warm to the touch – this is normal). Dip a shaped pretzel into the lye bath for about 30 seconds.

Like bagels, pretzels are made in boiling water prior to baking to give them their snappy outsides and chewy insides (messy!). Soft pretzels must be boiled, or dipped in a baking soda bath (or lye if you're gusty and strict with your pretzel traditions). THEN, they can be baked.

How do you keep homemade pretzels soft? ›

Its origin is often attributed to Germany, specifically to the region of Bavaria, although its precise beginnings are somewhat debated. The pretzel was invented by European monks in the early Middle Ages, possibly in the 6th or 7th century.

According to King Arthur Baking, lye and caustic sodas are used in the process of baking pretzels because lye's reaction to the pretzels, much like baking soda, gives them that chewy texture, light interior, and brown crust.

The popular toppings of authentic bavarian pretzels are:

Sesame, poppy, sunflower, pumpkin or caraway seeds, cheese sauce and bacon bits. Bavarians especially enjoy their pretzels in the late morning with Weißwürst, sweet mustard, and a Beer.

Tasting Notes:

The typical pretzel has a pleasant cracker-like flavor, a crisp, brittle texture and a brown glossy surface color. Salt crystals are often sprinkled on its surface to make them taste more appealing. Pretzels have a moisture content of anywhere from 2-4% and therefore have a very long shelf life.

Experts at The Daily Meal (via Fox News) suspect the secret ingredient is sugar. This makes total sense, not because we're some sort of band of dough geniuses over here, but because sugar obviously makes everything better — and because Auntie Anne's pretzels are definitely sweeter than your average pretzel.

After removing other scent molecules individually, the researchers found two molecules that are essential to the unique pretzel scent: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which has a roasted smell, and 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone, which has a caramel smell.