background

this week i am trying out king arthur's hot buttered soft pretzels

i'm usually not a big pretzel guy. i like auntie anne's and wetzel's pretzels as much as anyone else, but i prefer the sweet, cinnamon-y pretzels; i've never been a fan of the salty ones. i'm typing this up the day before i make them (august 30, 2025), so i'm not sure how they'll turn out, but i have a feeling i'll like them more than i'm expecting.

i asked genesis and tim what i should make this weekend, and tim said pretzels, which is how we got here.

thoughts

for the most part, i really liked this recipe! it called for table salt, but i used diamond crystal kosher salt. the different salts still confuse me. i also used lesaffre's saf red for the yeast. the dough called for 198 to 227g of water depending on the weather and i went with 211g.

i was not a fan of the instructions to make the dough. it just says that the dough should be soft, smooth, and elastic, but i always have to look up what that should feel and look like, and i wish they would include that in the recipe. it called for 5 to 8 minutes on a mixer, but it didn't specify a speed, and i had to do closer to 15 minutes to get my dough to pass the windowpane test. i need to do more research on what the dough should look like before i make these again.

but i definitely will make these again. the flavor was fantastic. i don't know what i was expecting, but it had that strong pretzel flavor and the texture was pillowy and perfect. it reminded me of the king arthur cinnamon roll recipe with the tangzhong.

the recipe has modifications to make sweet pretzel bites. i'm probably gonna make these again next week and am debating whether to make sweet whole pretzels or the sweet pretzel bites.

if i do make the whole pretzels again, i definitely need to work on my shaping. it's something that i always really struggly with, and i find that the dough has too much resistance and shrinks back or bunches up which makes the shapes look bulky. i think the problem is that i'm not letting the dough rest enough before trying to shape it so it's resisting, but i followed the recipe so i'm not sure. i need to look into it because this isn't the only recipe i've had that problem with.