Hot Buttered Pretzels

My mother-in-law gave me the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion Cookbook for Christmas. There are a ton of recipes in there I want to try, but when I came a cross the recipe for Hot Buttered Pretzels, I knew I had all the ingredients in the house. Plus it was Sunday, which means Football!!!



Hot Buttered Pretzels

Dough
2 1/2 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons regular instant yeast
7/8 to 1 cup warm water*

Topping
1/2 cup warm water
1 teaspoon sugar
coarse, kosher or pretzel salt (optional)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

*Use the greater amount in the winter, the lesser amount in the summer, and somewhere in between in the spring and fall. Your goal is a soft dough.

Place all of the dough ingredients into a bowl, and beat till well-combined. Knead the dough, by hand or machine, for about 5 minutes, till it's soft, smooth, and quite slack. Flour the dough and place it in a bag, and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 500°F. Prepare two baking sheets by spraying them with vegetable oil spray, or lining them with parchment paper.

Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface, and divide it into eight equal pieces (about 70g, or 2 1/2 ounces, each). Allow the pieces to rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes. While the dough is resting, combine the 1/2 cup warm water and the sugar, and place it in a shallow bowl.

Roll each piece of dough into a long, thin rope (about 28 to 30 inches long), and twist each rope into a pretzel, as illustrated. Dip each pretzel in the warm water mixture (this will give the pretzels a nice, golden-brown color), and place them on the baking sheets. Sprinkle them lightly with coarse, kosher, or pretzel salt. Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.

Bake the pretzels for 8 to 9 minutes, or until they're golden brown, reversing the baking sheets halfway through.

Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush them thoroughly with the melted butter. Keep brushing the butter on until you've used it all up; it may seem like a lot, but that's what gives these pretzels their ethereal taste. Eat the pretzels warm, or reheat them in an oven or microwave. Yield: 8 pretzels.

My Review: The pretzels were easy to make and really tasty. I would definitely make them again. The only problem was that I used parchment paper. Which I found out is only good up to 420 degrees. After 8 minutes in 500 degrees it starts to burn. I would have baked the pretzels a little longer, but was afraid the parchment paper was going to catch on fire. Next time I'll just grease the baking sheets.