Soft Pretzels

Little girl is a big fan of Auntie Anne's sour cream pretzel, I can't figure either she likes the sour cream more or the pretzel, but it'd be a must buy item whenever she sees the outlet, and not just buying 1 but at least 2!

When I saw the recipe at Famous Cuisine (No. 59 - Nov-Dec 2009), I told little girl I'd bake it for her. And I did, last Dec, but the stupid me forgot to put in yeast (will show u the pic later), the result turned out hard as rock, I had to feed the rubbish bin instead of little girl :p Then I was busy with stuffs and forgot about it totally until I re-read the magazine again few days ago.

I'm home today, doing revision with little girl, managed to steal some times to bake it. Here u r, the recipe:

Ingredients

450g high protein flour

50g whole meal flour

40g brown sugar

2 tsp salt

2 tsp instant yeast

300ml water

Soda solution

500ml water

2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Glazing

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp water

Garnishing

50g parmesan cheese (used cheddar popcorn seasoning)

3 tbsp butter, melted

1. Combine flours, sugar, salt and instant yeast in a mixer, add in water, beat until forms smooth and elastic dough
2. Place dough in a warm place, covered and leave to leaven for 60 minutes or until doubled in size
3. Divide dough into 8 portions (100g each), roll the dough into long strip (about 20 inches) and shape by crossing and twisting like pretzel
4. Place twisted pretzel on a greased baking pan, leave to leaven for 15 minutes
5. Drop pretzel into the soda solution and remove
6. Glaze with beaten egg, sprinkle with parmesan cheese
7. Bake in preheated oven at 200C for 10 minutes. Remove and glaze with butter, sprinkle parmesan cheese again. Continue bake for another 10-15 minutes or until cook
8. Remove from oven and glaze with melted butter immediately

I halved the ingredients listed above and managed to get 3 pretzels and 2 pretzel knots and I didn't take out the pretzel like (7), just baked them for about 20 minutes in 1 go.

2 cheese pretzel

1 plain butter pretzel

2 pretzel knots

Top with ketchup, ham and lot of cheddar cheese

These pretzels r soft and tasted so delicious with a glass of ice milk tea after hours of studying (actually there was plenty of rest times in between of study)

Tsk... Forgot to update on this, I actually hand-kneaded these babies, not as tough as I thot...

Now, wanna have a look of the fail attempt I did last Dec, so shy to show u these:

Super hard rocky pretzels: plain and with cinnamon sugar

The stupid me realized of the yeast-less only after baking and while sampling it!