Salted Pretzels with Salt Glaze
The famous pretzels with elastic salt glaze.
When I was a student I liked to eat those salt "shells" first and only then eat the less interesting pretzel. I only knew them by this name "salted pretzel". However, I learned from Florin that here in Cluj they were called "pereti" in the '80s. A quick Google search revealed where this name comes from - they're called perec in Croatia, pereca in Serbia and sós perec in Hungary.
This isn't a simple salted pretzel. I noticed that all these names refer to the same type of pretzel: less browned than what I call a pretzel/brezel, with a softer crust, fluffier crumb, more aromatic and slightly sweet to go well with the salt glaze. How did I manage to achieve these characteristics that make them so special? Instead of boiling them in water with baking soda, I just brushed them twice with boiling water mixed with baking soda. This way the crust was blanched enough to brown nicely without becoming too hard. I added butter to get a fluffy crumb and I added some milk and butter to have a tasty and slightly sweet crumb. To all this was added some help from a small old bakery guide I found in my mother-in-law's library.
Ingredients
125ml warm milk
125ml warm water
1/2 packet dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
50g butter cut into pieces (at room temperature)
375g all-purpose flour (BL55)
1 teaspoon salt
Blanching
200ml water
10g baking soda
Salt Glaze
50g all-purpose flour
20g salt
100ml water
Yield: 11 (7 small and 4 large)
How to prepare salted pretzels with salt glaze
- Put the dough ingredients in the bread machine in the order given. Set the machine to the kneading program. You can also knead by hand, but you need to insist for about 15 minutes so that the dough becomes very elastic. Put the dough in a bowl greased with oil, cover and let it rest at room temperature for only 15 minutes, during which it will rise very little.
- Turn the dough onto the work surface (I placed parchment paper underneath it) and with your hand shape it into a square or rectangle. You'll feel that the dough is very elastic and stretches without effort. With a pastry wheel cut equal strips (about 35-40g for small pretzels or 75-80g for large pretzels).
- Take each piece and roll it so that you get a roll as thick as your thumb. As a guide, I can tell you that from the small pieces I got rolls 50 cm long. If you want fluffier pretzels you can leave the rolls a bit thicker. The thinner you make them, the crispier they will turn out.
- Shape the pretzels directly in the baking tray lined with parchment paper. Don't crowd them, so they have room to rise. You'll need 2 trays to fit them all.
- After they're all shaped, put the trays in plastic bags and let them rise at room temperature for 1 hour.
- Before the hour expires, bring the water with baking soda to a boil. Using a brush, coat the pretzels with the boiling water. Be careful to coat them everywhere. This mixture will make the crust brown, and if you miss certain spots (the edges for example) they won't brown there. Repeat the coating with boiling water. A double coating ensures a crispier crust.
- Bake at 200°C for 10 minutes, until pleasantly golden.
- Mix the ingredients for the glaze. You'll get a mixture like pancake batter, it should flow slowly off the spoon.
- Remove the pretzels from the oven and with a spoon drizzle the glaze in a zig-zag over them. You can put as much glaze as you like, you don't have to use it all.
- Put the tray back in the oven for 3-4 minutes, just long enough to cook the glaze.
- The pretzels are best fresh and on the day they were baked, especially if you made them thinner.
The dough
The dough risen for 15 minutes
The dough cut into pieces
A thin roll as thick as a finger
The shaped pretzels in the tray
The risen and blanched pretzels
The salt glaze
The baked pretzels drizzled with salt glaze
