Go to the Recipe: Triple-Malted Soft Pretzels
This recipe looks great. I really don't like the new way recipe page looks, I find it super busy and hard to parse/find what I'm looking for.
Hey just curious; did you experiment with 'baked baking soda', aka sodium carbonate for the pretzels? I know you must be aware of it because Sho literally wrote the article on it for Serious Eats!
Had the same issue with the new landing page, but someone pointed out to me that going to the search tool will take me to the Gallery layout and I just updated my bookmark to point to that.
Can confirm that Matthew's pretzels are great! Thanks for the feedback on the new recipe page. We're getting used to it, too, and we're already working on improvements. As others have noted, the original gallery layout is still here, if you prefer that!
Yes, I did try it out. Soda ash or washing soda is another name for Sodium carbonate. You can go through the effort of "boiling" it on stove top to remove moisture or bake it. I just didn't see a reward for that for this recipe. There is no comparison to lye. But if you wanted to use the soda ash, you will follow the same process as for baking soda.
What are we talking about? It looks the same to me (on my laptop running Safari).
Can you discuss the decision for the lye bath after the par bake? Was this done purely for convenience or were the results the same/superior to dunking pre bake? Also, can you talk about the difference in dunking in a room temperature lye bath vs a simmering lye bath.
The decision for the lye bath was done for more consistent results, better control and handling of the dough, and it's just plain safer. The results are more consistent dipping after baking. When you pre bake the pretzels the lye bath need not be hot since they don't need any help proofing. Bavarian pretzels tend to be chewier and not as fluffy as these.
One issue I always have with lye is that the product bakes onto the parchment like super-glue. Advice? Use a silpat? 💰
Please please please put a link to the gallery view at the top of the new page, and never get rid of the gallery view. The new layout is terrible for actual exploration of the various recipes.
While a Silpat will work, I would spray the hell out of the parchment with pan spray when using lye and raw dough. The method used above with pre baking pretzels first, the lye will still tend stick to unsprayed parchment. Using a sprayed screen, as showed above, produces the best texture from air flow all around.
When parchment sticks, it is no fun. You have to remove while still hot or allow to cool completely. And its just a gamble either way. Sometimes there is no winning.
I actually thought of the same, based on ChefStep article on Ramen Noodles: https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/handmade-ramen-noodles-easier-than-you-think
Could you freeze the parbaked pretzels to bake off later? If so, would you dip in lye first or before baking?
In theory you would freeze after par baking, freeze, thaw, refresh, then dip in lye and final bake.
If I wanted to turn these into traditional hard pretzels (like you would buy at the store), would I just lower the oven temp and cook them longer (until hard)?
Good lord what a difference in ease of making these with the par bake then dip method. From a sketchy method with the dough stretching all over the place to a simple easy dip and bake. I will now pretzel everything. Thanks as always Chefsteps!
