Because splashing lye can burn the skin and stain your countertop, you want to make sure you’re being extra careful with this solution. Lye is also responsible for making the dough nice and crunchy. If you decide to use lye, you’ll want to make sure you only use food-grade variety, which is much less intense and is normally used to cure olives and alkalize cocoa. Yet the chefs who rely most on lye say that it helps to give the dough a rich golden brown color during the cooking process. It’s worth noting that as long as you have the baking soda, you don’t actually need the lye. In addition to those aforementioned ingredients, some purist chefs will also make pretzels with lye, an alkaline solution that’s also called sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide. These ingredients will make the dough more malleable and prevent it from sticking to a surface like the bowl or countertop. If you do choose to knead your dough by hand, make sure to employ a handful of flour and a few teaspoons of oil. Some chefs will use a mixer, but others prefer to knead the dough by hand as to better control quality.

Malt syrup, rice syrup or dark brown sugar.Īs for kitchen equipment, most recipes require:.

However, there are several core ingredients that all pretzel recipes feature. There are a few different ways to actually cook pretzels. So, before the next big game, here is what you need to make prize-winning pretzels every time: Regardless of the occasion, pretzels are a great exercise in cooking, requiring the use of a number of skills you may have already learned in culinary academy. With a generally simple mix of salty and grainy flavors, the soft pretzel has become a signature food of American entertainment, much in the same way as hot dogs or bags of peanuts. What do baseball games, carnivals and your local pier all have in common? More than endless fun and fresh air, all of these locales serve up soft pretzels.

Best kitchen tools for making pretzles