Fat-free Soft Pretzels

Submitted by _Pixie_

"Years ago my daughter brought this recipe home from school to do as a project. I just came across it again and couldn't help but remember the fun she had making it (needed a bit of help with the boiling water and oven). They turned out good too, including the ones she made with silly shapes."

 

• Ready In: 28mins
• Ingredients: 7
• Yields: 2 pans

ingredients

• 1⁄8 cup water
• 1 package active dry yeast
• 1 1⁄3 cups water
• 1⁄3 cup brown sugar
• 5 cups flour
• coarse salt or kosher salt
• baking soda

directions

1. Dissolve the yeast in the 1/8 c warm water (use a large bowl).
2. Stir in the 1 1/3 c warm water and brown sugar.
3. Slowly mix in the flour.
4. Knead dough (using extra flour for the board and your hands) until it is stretchy and smooth (not sticky).
5. Grease two large cookie sheets.
6. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
7. Fill a 2-3 quart saucepan half full of water.
8. Add 1 tablespoon of baking soda for every cup of water.
9. Bring to a boil.
10. Talk a golf-ball size piece of dough and roll into a rope as thich as your thumb.
11. Bend into a U-shape, cross ends, twist crossed ends making a full turn, then fold the ends back toward the middle of the U.
12. Press ends into dough firmly.
13. Should be the familiar pretzel shape.
14. Other shapes (including candy cane shapes for Christmas) also work.
15. Lower pretzel in boiling water for 30 seconds, remove from water (getting rid of any excess water) and place on greased cookie sheet.
16. Sprinkle with coarse or kosher salt.
17. Repeat until all the dough has been used.
18. Bake for 8 minutes or until golden.

Reviews

[littlebaker]

These pretzels were fantastic! But you have to have strong arms to make it. It was really hard to get all of the flower into it. I ended up just putting a little less that 4 cups into it. I dont how you would be able to get 5 cups into it. But the end result was well worth all of the effort. Thanks so much!

 

[ladypit]

Well, the end result was very good but I had pitfalls along the way. I wonder if the proportions are wrong because I could not get the dough to accept that much flour. I ended up putting it all in my kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook and letting it go for a few minutes. We made a bunch of funny pretzels (I did this with my 2 and 4 year old kids) and they loved watching the pot of water foam everytime I dropped another one in. Next time I will grease the pan better as they stuck. But they had great flavor and it was a fun family activity.