Pretzel Rolls

In February this year, my husband and I went on our first “luxury” cruise.  We’d been on a couple of cruises in the past, but they were super-high-intensity-adventure-time cruises.  You know, the kind where you are happily exhausted all the time because every day you come to a different port and go explore.  This was not that kind of cruise.  It was the “freestyle dining” type, where you eat whenever you want, as much as you want.  This was a problem.  A very delicious problem.  It wrecked my body’s recently achieved balance and it was glorious (I’m only now getting back to normal).

The best part of the cruise were pretzel rolls, made fresh every day for breakfast and lunch.  We ate tons of them.  We grabbed handfuls to take on the excursions as “hangry” snacks, stole them to our room (which wasn’t really stealing, it’s “freestyle”!), and even grabbed a bunch when we disembarked at the end of the cruise for the long wait in the airport.  When we got back, it was all we could talk about, so I immediately queried Pinterest and found these delicious little bites from une bonne vie:

Ingredients (adapted from une bonne vie):

The Dough
6 – 7 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 1/2 cups milk, slightly warmed
1 cup water, slightly warmed
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling (I didn’t have any)

The “Bath”
7 cups water
1 tablespoon salt
4 tablespoons baking soda

Directions:

  1. In a small container, mix yeast with warmed milk and let rest for 10 minutes.
  2. Whisk 5 3/4 cups of flour and teaspoon of salt in a large bowl.
  3. Add oil and warmed water to yeast mixture. Pour into bowl with flour and salt.
  4. Knead in the bowl until dough is mostly smooth. Only add more flour if your dough cannot be easily handled. The dough will be somewhat stiff. Cover the bowl with a dish towel and put in a warm place to rise for one hour.
  5. Punch down dough and knead in bowl for one minute.
  6. Cut dough into 15 pieces. (Cut more pieces if you would like smaller size rolls) and form balls by pulling the dough under.
  7. Place on a well-greased surface. Let the dough balls rise for 15 minutes.
  8. While the dough balls are rising, preheat the oven to 400 degrees and get the pretzel “bath” ready.
  9. In a large pot, bring water, salt, and baking soda to a rolling boil.
  10. Plunge three dough balls into the water and let them “poach” for 1 minute total. Using a slotted spoon, transfer them to a well-greased baking sheet.
  11. With a serrated knife, cut 2-3 lines across each roll and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.
  12. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until pretzels are a rich brown.  These are best eaten the same day they are made.

These turned out perfect!  I had never poached a baked good before so I didn’t know what to expect, but these were nice and easy.  The original recipe called for canola oil, but I didn’t have it, so I used olive oil, which I like the taste of better anyway.  All-purpose flour can of course be substituted for bread flour, which is my personal preference and was not in the original recipe.  I also did not use sea salt for sprinkling because I didn’t have any.  This didn’t seem to matter though, because they were crusted in a perfect amount of salt flavor from the bath.

My husband and I could not stop eating these and tried to give some away to friends and family just to get them out of our house.  I even halved the recipe to avoid such insanity!  Next time I may just make the whole batch and plan to give them away as gifts.  Or maybe we’ll just eat them all. + 10 charisma.


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