World’s Greatest Soft Pretzels – huge pretzels that are soft, buttery and salty, you know the ones I’m talking about.
My husband and I love our pretzels and we make them quite often. But for some reason we’re not quite pleased with them, we’re looking for that special soft pretzel that you get at the mall, or at the ball game. You know the one I’m talking about, eh? Those huge pretzels that you just can’t stop eating, they’re salty, they’re buttery, they’re just amazing. Well I think we finally hit the jackpot.
After the hundreds of experiments and hundreds of pretzels eaten, we’ve finally done it. We made the pretzel of our dreams. The world’s greatest soft pretzels. Don’t let the pictures fool you, these pretzels are huge, just like the ones you buy at the ball game. Just writing about them now makes me drool and wished I had one to enjoy, but hey we made these a couple weeks ago, so no pretzel for me now. But I have the memories, and most importantly I have the recipe.
Pretzels are not hard to make, so don’t get discouraged by the fact that you have to make a water bath with baking soda and dip them in there, that’s child’s play. The dough is super easy to make too, just use your mixer, let it do all the work. And the fun part, is rolling out the long ropes and I swear my ropes were 3 or 4 feet long, just because I wanted the largest pretzels.
Now let me just tell you for a minute here how good these are, especially if you eat them right out of the oven. When they come out, brush them with some melted butter, and before you take a bite, dip that piece in the butter again and then eat it. The saltiness from the coarse Kosher salt and the buttery pretzel, well this just doesn’t get any better. You’ll just want to keep on eating, so don’t let me stop you.
If you guys love this recipe, and most importantly make it yourselves, please let us know. Take a picture and tag it #jocooks on Instagram so we can see it. I always love to see what you guys come up with!
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World’s Greatest Soft Pretzels
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups water lukewarm
- 1 tbsp active dry yeast
- 4 1/2 to 5 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup milk lukewarm
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 5 tbsp baking soda
- butter for brushing
- sea salt for sprinkling
Instructions
- In the bowl of your mixer, combine the warm water with the yeast and lightly stir. In another large bowl, mix the salt, sugar and flour together. When the yeast dissolves, add the flour mixture and the warm milk. Using the dough attachment, mix everything until the dough comes together and is no longer sticky. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size in a greased bowl, and covered with a damp towel. It should take about an hour.
- Punch down the dough and divide it into 9 pieces. Take each piece and roll it into a long rope, about 3 to 4 feet and about 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Shape each rope into a pretzel shape and place them onto greased cookie sheets and let them rise again for about 15 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 500 F degrees.
- In a large pot, make a bath with baking soda and boiling water. Using a large spoon, lower each pretzel into the water and leave in for about 30 seconds to a minute. You don’t have to wait until they float. Return the pretzels to the cookie sheet and brush them with melted butter and sprinkle them generously with the Kosher sea salt.
- Bake until golden brown, about 10 minutes, depending on the oven. When you take them out of the oven you can brush them again with butter and serve them hot and/or with mustard.
Recipe Notes
- Prep time includes time to allow the dough to rise.
- Cook time is per one cookie sheet at a time. I was able to place 2 pretzels per cookie sheet, so I baked 4 times.
- Nutritional information is for 1 pretzel. Please keep in mind that nutritional information is a rough estimate and can vary greatly based on products used.
Nutrition Information:
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Made these today and they were excellent ..froze a few for a future treat. Very easy to follow recipe and the dough was very easy to work with.
Glad you liked it!
The pretzels taste great but my pretzels stuck to the pan and cooked faster on the bottom. I put butter down to grease the pan. Was this my issue?
They shouldn’t have stuck if you greased the pan, next time you can try using parchment paper instead.
Can you put more than one pretzel at a time in the water bath?
If your pot is big enough, sure, but I wouldn’t stack them on top of each other.
Amazing as usual!! Made it with a cheese sauce and it was delicious!!
Loved your Cinnabons recipe as well., especially since we don’t have Cinnabon stores here in Israel!
There’s nothing quite like homemade! Enjoy 🙂
Haven’t made this yet- planning on it asap- however I’m wondering if I can substitute instant yeast for the active dry yeast… I’m not much of a baker and am scared of yeast haha
Yes you can use instant yeast!
These look sooo good! It’s just my husband and me at home, and we won’t go through this many pretzels. Can I half the recipe?
Yes you can!
How do you keep the pretzels shape when you put it into the water bath?
Keep the water at a simmer rather than a rolling boil, and very gently place the pretzels into the water.
Wow. I have been searching a long time for pretzels this good. I try a different random recipe everytime because I’m never quite satisfied but I will for sure be making these again!