Swabian Pretzels the Sourdough Way

Which way is a pretzel upside down?

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#sourdough #pretzels #pretzel

You know this wouldn’t be proof if we didn’t also try to make pretzel croissants is this the first for the world of pretzeled sourdo croissant the taste that comes from this Li is just makes me smile do we have really cold water cold water yeah like colder than

Tap cold okay so we have some colder than tap watero it’s cold water and we also have some milk and it’s actually enough to use the water you don’t need any ice uh crushed ice in the make but the ice will cool down the water down to okay maybe 30

35 so more or less this is low fat milk that we’re making right now I have a little bit more butter in the recipe so it’s not low fat milk We’ll add the fat it should be actually you want the fat part in the in the dough that’s why you use milk

Otherwise you could just use water and that’s why you use butter too so now putting Harriet in with the the liquid mixture that’s all set now we could measure out the salt and the flow and the flow I think something lighter like the type 70 would probably be yeah

Definitely type 70 or Rose or even the z0 will work let’s let’s use the one that you most commonly use for your country s also I think makes sense we use a type 85 for the country sour but when we run out of type 85 we sometimes

Mix the type 70 with a lighter flow definitely makes sense for this kind of product 5,550 I’ll definitely need almost three scoops probably should have had the next size up container so if we don’t spill anymore this is our flower measure and this is also the recipe that I brought with me

So the Arizona climate and the Arizona grain probably will ask for more water for more water or milk anyway yeah but the truth is this uh this D should be very very much on the opposite opposite side of stretchy and fluid it should almost be like resisting

The shaping yeah right and that’s what you want to have salt har butter flour milk water all the ingredients are assembled so as soon as we have a free mixer we can throw them in the mixer actually butter goes late into the last right yeah just like actually after

The dough has assembled then you put in the butter yeah la last last like that’s how we do all the butter dough that’s perfect 300 on the dot perfect okay so everything is ready for us to make bretzels the fastest this can really go is is we’re going to take this

Through more of a Sourdough process so going to bring the dough together like our country sourdough will bulk ferment it we’re then going to shape the pretzels let them overnight uh in the cooler let them first proof a little bit then first proof and then cuz that’s you want them at a

Stage where they’re fully like ready to be baked shape them today and then we put them put them on coues cover them and put them in the r got it all right so we’re ready for this retzel mix we have the milk water and uh hary it in here I’m going to go

Ahead and go first right Y and this is quite cold cuz uh the water was actually mixed with ice so I’m not going to worry about butter yet that’s going to be at the very end put the flour mixture in and you actually can put the salt now

On top because it’s not going to be in direct contact with the starter okay so we’re going to bring this together I would say 5 minutes slow and 5 minutes fast how would you call that um cotton cotton ball texture inside but it’s still nice to choose a

Lighter flow because a like a whole wheat flow wouldn’t really have that cotton ball exactly and you have the contrast of dark and light from the crust that is uh built through the LI you know it’s going to be very dark on the dark maroon Brown on the side it’s a

Kind of a beautiful color actually in some ways I’m looking forward to the end result for to see that color and you said you like the slice and again you know that builds the contrast between the maroon dark color and then the inside of the of the

Bretzel you were saying that in Bavaria there’s no SL no uh scoring of the and where in Germany is that in suia this is the neighboring region to Bavaria so they’re competing who invented the bretzel who has the best bretzel and north of Germany traditionally didn’t

Have bretzel at all so can so it it would be maybe appropriate on our menu to call it the pretzel yes it sounds very uh exotic uh s w a b i a n so we’re almost at the stage that all the raw flow is uh Incorporated which means I

Can probably kick it up to second gear very soon yeah exactly I would not hurry like you can still leave it one or two minutes on slow and there’s really no dough on the proof menu that’s uh quite this stiff NOP croissant dough has a stiffness for

Sure no question it it has to because you put so much butter in it so you’re going to put the butter in now first SL that makes sense bit by bit Yeah butter is actually acting as an emulsifier right and it’s cutting through the gluten strands so it will

Never be that elastic it won’t have any air pockets but you will have short gluten strands and what I what I understood is is the the English term short bread comes from that it has fats in the in the dough and it cuts the long gluten strands into shorter gluten

Strands and that’s why it’s called short bread and actually the contrast here is that we’re mixing in the butter really just past the incorporation stage of the flour and the water uh if you allow the dough to develop more on second speed and then add butter it has a different

Effect than if you add the butter at this stage which does really prevent the gluten from coming together but later on in the mix the gluten could come together and the dough would be just almost lubricated by the butter so what you’re saying is we we are not aiming

For like a strong gluten development at all and we’re kind of using butter in our as our friends to prevent it to help them yeah and that’s also similar to other you know baked goods like American Pio the same kind of deal you or even biscuit dough they both have butter but

In in that case you try to create a marbleized effect with the butter but for the same purpose of breaking up the gluten from really forming cuz nobody wants a chewy pie uh it’s just not what you go for for for pie would you make pretzels with like a weaker protein

Flour like a pastry flour or would you still go for a a better bread flour yeah you still want to go for a better bread flour to create that Airy cotton ball texture that is hard for a weat wheed flour to form so it’s it’s kind of like a like U yeah

Opposites that help the uh the final product so you want a strong bread flour with lots of protein at the same time you don’t want the long gluten strands to form and we’re mixing it cold also to really prevent too much fermentation activity it seems yeah from the start

You don’t want too much fer a activity and and it’s really like in these little things if you think about it that makes all the difference in the end because you will still make good bretzels if you do it a little different but uh you know over time it has shown

That this process works best so the dough is pretty cohesive again with the butter I think it’s probably a good opportunity to go to second speed Now all right so you have you know pretty decent development it yeah almost passes the window Paine test it’s not too warm it it’s also not cold anymore we ended at 74° so it’s still going to be active during the bulk but not not like maximally active so this can just go in

A bin right yeah just weigh it in the bin I grease it a little bit with canola oil just prevent sticking just over 10 kilos of dough so 10,080 and if we’re aiming for 10,080 134 G each it’s going to be large pretzel but nice I’m excited about the

Large pretzel I think it should be large I’m just want to need it just to get a good feel it’s always good to put your hands thank you all right let’s do it this looks nice yeah I think it’s going to be fun to shape with pretzel makers get to work with

Kind of a fun texture of dough are you going to cut it in strips to make it easy yeah left-handed so we dividing this in pieces of 134 G just because we weighed the dough before and it turns out 75 pretzels make exactly with exactly 134 G

And I’m pre-rounding these this kind of dough is almost relaxing to divide mhm is that a decent pre-shape or do you think they should be longer as long as as far as it’s like comfortable yeah okay it’s really important to not press on from here and I think an impatient

Novice you know doesn’t really understand this in their sort of relationship with dough I’m more speaking from my my maybe first experiences of making pretzels where I really didn’t understand this resistance game you you need to do this and then take time because the dough really needs

To relax if you’re going to get that full shape otherwise you’re just going to go you know keep straining the dough to its breaking point and it’s not going to do what you want it to do anyway there’s only so so much elasticity uh and extensibility those are kind of opposite polarities

Elasticity is that resistance and extensibility is is what you’re looking for and there is an upper limit the way in which you gain more extensibility also is just allowing the dough to relax so I’m trying to find a good Rhythm working with saram in conjunction between his divisions my rounding and my

Pre-shaping in the cylinder I’m going to try 10 and then move on to this stage do you remember how they shaped these pizza balls they took them like this and folded them into oh yeah itself I remember that and they make this like mozzarella kind of yeah ball makes a very nice tight

Ball it’s amazing 10 kilos of pretzel do was actually quite a bit of pretzel I told you but then once you make it you want to share so I need a few making our way through this batch of dough the pre- shapes are building up and the good

Thing is while you finish this kind of first pre-shaping the other ones have relaxed to the point where you can easily stretch them out that’s a problem with the small batch then you have a waiting time of 10 or 15 minutes just doing nothing something I real realized

With all of the spaces we’ve had is how nice it is to be able to work across a bench from someone y something that I hope to restore in Mesa it really takes something away when you can’t work on two sides of the bench somehow and something also helps to get your hands

With have you been surprised at how busy my current life is uh no but it was a surprise that it was happening in so many different places at the same time YouTube doesn’t really capture the reality of of life in between those spaces yeah yeah you see just you know

Kind of the focused part of it being in one place but the way things all fit together even here I didn’t I wasn’t aware by watching the the videos that this production part is is a different building yeah and you have to crossa 20 yards or something like that

To get to the other building also proof is a collection of you know 50 people working and pretty large community of customers it’s pretty satisfying product to make actually it’s relaxing it’s like a meditation right yeah when I first started proof with when I was still working with jar

We were making Brio rolls daily for one of the restaurants like 40 of them a day so I just got to practice a little bit each day 40 yeah and it felt like a lot right it felt like a lot yeah now we’re making a baby batch of pretzels and it’s tried a

Lot so you’re going even longer with the pre-shape the on I did you can really lean into them so what is the story of the soft pretzel and how it came to be made with lie in the first place I mean the the stuff burns your skin when you use it right

And it would burn your guts and throat we’re going to bring the rubber gloves for this project I think we even we talking about goggles right how in the world did this come to be in a baked good well there’s several different takes on this and different stories but

I think the the most agree agreed upon is The Apprentice was supposed to clean the baking sheets with the cleaning substance and it was quite an aggressive Li to get all the you know the the burnt parts of the sheets and as a second job he was supposed to dip the bretzels in

The sugar solution because at the time the baking Goods that had that shape of a bretzel were always sweet was always considered a sweet treat obviously he made a mistake and he dipped the pretzel dough the shape pretzels into the LI instead of the sugar solution and and

Baked it off so the master comes back into the into the bakery and shouts like what did you do oh my God looks so different nevertheless they tried it they put it in their mouth and they’re like hm that’s quite tasty and from then on they made it a product wow the funny

Thing is that this lie which is quite aggressive and hazardous actually loses all its uh reactive faculties over a certain temperature I think in Fahrenheit it should be something like over over 400° or something like that yeah so it’s just on the surface of the Brussel and so it’s

Immediately uh touched by that heat and it loses all aggressivity that it has otherwise and become something quite enjoyable to eat would you say a bread so isn’t a bradel without lie yeah absolutely like many people try to get around this process because it is a little bit weird and strange to wear

Rubber gloves and protective goggles and all that and you know just imagine that you’re putting something in your mouth that otherwise is a cleaning agent yeah so they use baking soda many other things also but uh it never gives you the same result it never gives you that

Kind of pleasant taste so these are our oldest ones I think we should put these aside because we need a certain length they should come almost to this length so these are the the youngest so to say so we should take them from here yeah move them all over there so let’s see

Your pretzel shaping now I feel it is sliding so just give a little SP on hand very little is enough we maybe even got to do the third stage yeah they show some resistance I see that they pull together but that’s already an accomplishment like halfway

To the final size so on this stage I would I would try to achieve an even thickness and in the last stage then we keep them the are thicker and we roll out only the the edges that’s a that’s a thing if you work on a stone bench you don’t have

That problem with sliding though oh yeah it’s just another surface to work on makes things easier in in some ways probably don’t have to wait a full 10 minutes between these stages or you think we still have to give it just do a few of these and then they will have relaxed

Enough also there’s a seam that you can still see yeah but actually it comes together in such a way that you don’t have to worry too much about it to have it on the you know on the bottom side or upper side you won’t really see it in

The final bake so what we’re actually doing today is one of two most famous varieties of bretzel this is going to be not the Bavarian bretzel but the suabian bretzel it’s a little bit different in recipe suabian bretzel has more fat content in the dough than Bavarian and

Also in appearance it is going to be a little bit different um but we’re going to go into this when we actually put them into the final shape I guess what we can do if you have some of these strings ready uh we can prepare some sheets with um with kushes on

Because after we have shaped them we should put them directly on the cush just prevent them from sticking scking while they’re proofing you know so what we’re aiming for is a thicker middle part so probably you don’t even want to touch that anymore and then the outer

Part can actually be quite uh quite slim and you leave these little how would you call these buttons knobs thicker ends maybe even longer okay good want stretch it a little bit and then put it down and cross it cross it again and then put them down here with their

Belly with their buttons a little bit sticking over the edges nice yeah yours is even nicer than mine you can put them directly on the on a cush right they’re very satisfying even to see you have to really put them push them hard so because otherwise they will

Actually come off and then they can still stretch them a little bit to the final size okay so they can even be a little bit longer because now they will prove they will actually rise and they will be very dense and I think the the shape the

Final shape that you also liked on the pictures that I showed you was the ones that were like large in size with big holes in between the different parts gotcha so as long as I can make them yeah probably from from the edge of the

Table to to this row that should be a good size mind you that they will still from the elasticity they will contract a little bit since this is proof and since you work with Harriet only as your uh fermentation agent mhm this is also a sour do pretzel which is very unusual

And I’m really excited to to get a taste of the result of this are you at all worried about fermentation time being different not fermentation but how how the final outcome will be yeah in regards of taste of the final product that one did come can stretch in

A little bit so I think achieving something like this is probably optimal they will have the same weight you know in the end it doesn’t matter but different shap the pre preferences of having different a different shape and U the size also of it so the appearance

Matters are there rules in Germany about what you can eat a pretzel with not rules but habits habits and what are they the mustard is definitely uh something you can have it with or in Bavaria they would have a certain sausage called Vice which is a very special sausage you’re only supposed to

Eat it until noon now there’s a couple other shapes that we were talking about are are there any we can still make yeah bretzel uh sticks so that’s just that they would be maybe a little bit longer okay like that we should leave a few as pretzel stick for sure and then there

Was the knots too right y the one string knots actually we call it the one string braid because you braid it but you only use one instead of three or five M yeah getting there huh my gosh I like to practice those techniques when you get a chance it’s like rolling

The dough with two hands versus one if you never practice two then you’ll always only be able to do one right and this one in particular just looks so cool that it’s hard to can show off whenever you’re practicing bread don’t just limit yourself to one loaf at

Least make two cuz you’ll get at least double the practice but if you can make more than two if you can practice at scale it’s a lot easier to learn anything so you know practicing on on 75 pretzels versus practicing on a batch of eight well I can afford to sling do some

Pretzel schling uh did I say that right yeah we we definitely did stages of stretching this dough out to get to this length and that’s also something I’ve never done before in making pretzels I think it was a big mistake that we were making in the past that would have

Limited us from having such good pretzels you can see as they’re coming along versus our first trays how much more consistent in size these last ones are I just goes to show like what practice does if we made these on a daily basis probably all of them would

Look this is your first day of practice you already achieved like 100% Improvement as you’re improving in something at first there’s rapid gains you know it’s every day you do something you see it but then things do stabilize eventually and you have to fight harder for those Improvement games and there’s

Something nice about both ends of it uh it is nice doing something new and feeling like wow getting better every time I try this but also there’s something about the slower growth that comes with a maturing in understanding feel like I’m getting it down so after these are shaped they’re

Going to proof for a little while and then uh once we’re done proofing them we’ll put them in the fridge they’re actually going to develop a a skin around the dough which normally in almost any other bread would be undesirable in this case s says the skin is what’s important before interacting

With the lie and the reason being you don’t want the lie to go into the crumb of the of the pretzel you want you want it to stay on the outside actually I thought about it more if it’s inside the crumb it might not even get to that temperature that makes

It inactive so it’s like absolutely undesired to have it inside the crumb that’s why the skin is is not just a nice extra it’s actually almost a mandatory treatment and you can do it by S um having a proof overnight in the fridge or if you want if you have less

Time you can actually put it in the freezer for 15 minutes 20 minutes so the dough won’t really freeze but it will form that that skin there’s a lot of little things that make a big difference the wet hands uh the skin the multiple stages of pre-shaping all these things could

Really screw somebody up um and the last time I tried making pretzels we weren’t very experienced and I’m pretty sure I failed at all those points uh also the dough is quite underdeveloped for when we’re shaping it compared to almost anything else that we would do um and that’s something worth thinking about

Too I think I let the dough bulk forment to a later stage which did impact how easily this dough came together in these final shapes so these are now going to go in the proofer for a little while then the walk-in overnight for baking tomorrow

Morning so this has to be really dry you don’t want any water to be in there when this goes in the container the rule of uh dissolving Li is always have the water ready first and then dissolve the lie in the water and don’t like scale

The the the lie and then put water on top of it yeah because that will be a high super high concentration in the beginning ah and then you have a super strong reaction it can actually Splash and you know really react that’s actually the common rule

With any like acid or lie that you dissolve so we have two different kinds of uh food grade lie this is the food grade lie that I have access to uh in the United States and this is brol La retel laa laa is lie yeah so this is

Food grade lie it’s basically chemically is the same and uh this is roughly exactly what we need so I’m just going to use this one so the concentration recommended for U pretzels is 4% which in this case we had 6 L of water means 240 G of the lie so lie on

The periodic table is N I think it’s sodium hyrox know the English term something like that yeah sodium hydroxide it’s right here so this compound happens when you bring these two elements together and it’s used in all kinds of things soap making uh cleaning agents treatment of water this

Is food grade lie so it’s also used for food preparation it’s used sometimes to alter pH and metal dissolution it’s definitely a very powerful chemical and so we we have to take some precautions in handling it I’ve only used lie a few times in making pretzel attempts over

The years but when we were discussing your uh your vacation here uh quite some time ago we thought you know this would be a great thing to make together uh soft German and pretzels and and it is really fascinating to work on this because this whole process has been a

Bunch of little things if you do wrong you get a actually you could even say disastrous result especially when dealing with something as sensitive as this there there is a reason to to be cautious around making pretzels the traditional way uh and I don’t blame people for not wanting to use this

Chemical compound but to make an authentic pretzel this is what we’re what we’re dealing with so go slow and I’ll start dissolving and make sure that you’re not bending over because there’s going to be a reaction there’s going to be uh fumes coming up from this so you

Don’t want to directly inhale those also it is helpful not to Splash you know because you don’t want any splashes on your clothes or on the bench we’re using you said 4% yeah this is 4% uh a lot of times as a substitute baking soda it it’s it’s less harmful like it’s

Actually very harmless but it also doesn’t give you the same result so it forms a little bit like crystals now in in the water first that’s why I took the Whisk to dissolve it even a little bit phys physically it’s quick it just takes a minute or

Two it’s also a little bit blurry the water right now but it will be become clear and that’s a sign that that all the crystals have dissolved it’ll warm up the water a little bit you can actually feel it was was cold water from the top and now it’s a little bit like

Lukewarm that’s only during the initial uh reaction of dissolving it will cool down again to ambient temperature it’s already becoming more clear now the water I do have bigger gloves here the question is how well can you handle like hold the the pretzels when you dip them

Yeah do you have a good feeling in your fingers still I think it’s okay okay good so here like look at this this is actually a part that hasn’t dissolved yet wow so yeah and it’s also very warm when I touch it so if I would touch this

With my fingers now super high concentrated I would burn my fingers I would burn my skin in you can store it in a container with a lid that closes it tight and the rule of thumb is you can store it four to 6 weeks without any harm but because

You dip organic material into it like after a while it just needs to be renewed and recycled and since it’s a soapy lie you can actually just spill it in the sink you know and rinse it with with more water to dissolve it even more it actually cleans your

Pipes the Big Challenge we’re facing in this first attempt at making pretzels is getting the proofing right the souro pretzel is again a unique thing to proof and souro fermentation as we know is very different than yeasted fermentation so have to challenge some assumptions of the process leading up until now if we

Don’t get the results we want uh but generally with pretzels it sounds like from everything that we’ve been talking about that we don’t push them nearly as far as some of the other products in the fermentation uh and leave more for the oven to do yet if you don’t push them

Far enough they really won’t get a whole lot of um oven spring in the first place so right now the challenge is to figure out whether we’ve reached a sufficient enough level are goal is to fire off a very small amount just one deck uh and

See how it goes and then gauge it from there that’s part of the point of testing we should get it right today so we just pulled these out of the proofer for a little bit to try to give them uh more activity uh and now it’s important to just develop a small skin

Around them uh before baking so we’re going to shock them in the freezer for just a moment something that we don’t do very often they a little bit shiny surface you don’t want that in a perfect world we would have found the right range from which just to pull them from

The refrigerator and bake them and then you avoid this process but we’re watching the dough and this is a test and so it’s it makes sense that we’d you know have to test it out and I’ll set the timer for 5 minutes you got it yeah you can take this off if you

Want so we got some protective glasses goggles and uh proper gloves to handle the the pretzels while we dip them in the LIE how do they look yeah I mean it has a lot of skin I think okay yeah they look dry now yeah seems like a great

Time to use this where I’m going to dispose of the blade the stick is worthless to me as well can dispose of it I have a lot of them just to display safety yeah I mean truly if you dip the pretzel and it splashes in your eyes it

Could be a bad situation so I could drop them by accident you could drop them by accident it’s not worth taking a risk which is unnecessary so this is just because these break very easily and you don’t want to take a risk while you have your hands in the light and these break

So you can just put them on my hands gently I try to keep my hands mostly above this bin so whatever is falling off my gloves so we say 2 to 3 seconds in the LI so now I have three I can handle those as you can see I’m trying to hold

Down these little belly buttons to the dough so they don’t fall off okay we can do the next three Good and I think you can put this in a speed rack and we go to the next one just try the parchment paper without oiling it yep for now And then here I’m going to score these and I can put salt on them right which I think I left in the back so I’m scoring the belly of the pretzels this is apparently only a feature of swabian pretzels and not the Bavarian uh pretzels this two regions of

Germany that compete for notoriety on soft pretzels but I really much prefer the overall dynamics of the suabian pretzel including the score I think it’s a really nice Contrast can be quite generous CU it’s easy to flake off somebody doesn’t like all the salt so these are very transparent crystals even so the traditional pretzel salt is quite white so it creates a contrast with the Browning of the of the pretzels so I should find a really white salt

If you can if not I can send it to you all right let’s see how this goes so I think we should slide these directly on the deck now and no steam required no Steam and how much time do you think let’s go with 15 minutes first 15 all

Right yeah we have a light in this deck it’s going to be interesting to see how these Skies transform in the next 15 minutes you still want to keep the light is the humidity you the want to trapped that now in the in the I see so should I close the damper then

Yeah definitely okay but you don’t extra steam it because that will wash off part of the lie and of course you don’t want that okay so we’re just taking a peek after about 5 minutes of the bake just to see what happened here uh-oh nice the Browning is happening the Browning is

Happening although not a whole lot of uh there is some some Rising also is that about the size you they might rise some more okay yeah should rise some more definitely but it’s only 5 minutes in and with bad you say the first almost 10 minutes there’s a raise yeah I have a

Feeling that the second batch is going to get more rise we were a little bit impatient the thing about the sourdough process is it is fundamentally different than a yeasted process through and through and and that’s actually why there isn’t a whole lot of sourdough bakeries to begin with because all of

The baker’s knowledge of the world right now for the most part at a commercial level centers around using yeast in a recipe so if we talk about souro croissant you have to start over you have to start your whole Paradigm over because something that takes a couple hours to

Prove might take four times as long with a sourdough starter uh but that changes the way that the lamination goes that changes the way that the butter is handled the dough temperature is handled and I imagine with pretzels we might be facing similar obstacles and we have to

Still hit the critical note so what I’m very happy about is that in making pretzels with you now I understand some of the nuances and things I’m looking for but who knows maybe by the end of the day we’ll have to still investigate how this all fits in a souro process a

Little bit better uh and maybe because we’ve spread out our opportunity with the the pretzels we have we can find just right one thing that concerns me at this stage is that we did a quite short bulk time and what I’ve noticed in my own experience with all the other

Products is that if the bulk fermentation is cut to a minimum before the dough is refrigerated then it seems like you never quite get the full okay rise at the end then again finding just enough and understanding that pretzels are not supposed to have as much of a

Fermentation cycle as the rest but what does that mean in a Sourdough process does that mean shap shave off half in the beginning does it mean shave off a quarter in the beginning these are little nuances that can’t really be teased out without trial him right and

There’s also different in the size of each pretzel in comparison to a bread so that means you have 20 130 G piece and you handle it with your hands they get quite warm in the process it takes some time to to actually divide them and shape them right I think we used about

An hour yesterday with the dough on the table having our hands on the dough so there’s also a difference there which can speed up the process well we definitely had 70 something degree dough for roughly 4 hours yesterday but compare that to our normal average where

We have like 85° dough for 4 hours or so did you check the dough temperature at the end after we handled it and I didn’t check yeah you think I wouldest probably was over 0 so actually we’ve we’ve been chatting for another 4 minutes and it is

True we are getting a nice rise see how the White Center is coming up is popping over the the edges there and maybe it’s just right to be honest because I need some more time I I what I mean is like maybe the rise isn’t as bad as I it’s

Definitely not bad it’s maybe not at the peak but it’s not bad that’s for sure no open crumb structure necessary here right so we didn’t have enough Sil pads typically this is the best way to go with pretzel baking without a doubt you can see that I can can actually peel

This right off the sill Pat I try to do that here and the entire parchment paper goes we should have at least oiled the parchment paper we didn’t so those two are going to be a big problem and I’d love to say that I did this just for you

All so you can see so you can avoid this issue at home and fortunately like the worst case scenario we sacrificed two pretzels at the moment but you really want to invest in Sil Pats sadly for us all of our Sil Pats are a different Bakery today and I thought they would be

Here uh so we found one suitable silk hat not good enough in this case the level of Darkness yeah these are not fully maybe a minute two more it’s actually like a dark brown maroon color that you’re looking for so my estimation was was 18

Minutes we set the timer on 15 we have 2 minutes to go so probably 18 will be just right and the tempature is a little bit lower than than the setting so yeah makes sense all right we’ve got little uh dark buttons is that okay that’s fine

Spritz them with a little bit of water they’re still very hot to give them a shiny appearance and to help the the crust uh close more so the moisture stays in the in the crumb but will these actually be edible pretzels with this paper situation or will these be sacrificial pretzels I’m

Worried that it’s going to be the ladder with these two unfortunately I don’t see how we’re going to get this paper off these on the other hand are not going to be an issue so if you don’t spray these with water after the oven they just won’t have the shine and they the

Overall texture of the outer crust will be affected in a minimal way some people might even say they will last a little less long um do the when you spray a loaf or brush a loaf with moisture afterwards it’s like to create a seal on the outside and that’s something that won’t happen

Without the water so that’s why we do it and it is a helpful helpful trick so you can see on the sil Pats these pretzels just peel right off but uh that’s not the case with the with the ones with the paper which I think are just uh probably

Going to be sacrifices at the moment I think I would be a full to sell something like looking this good that probably won’t be very edible by tomorrow because pretzels are really the best same day we have 75 of them I’m obviously going to have to do something

With them it’s not a small batch but it’s one of the smallest mixers we have uh we only have one mixer smaller than that and uh we wanted to do something that approximated a real test for something we would actually do in the bakery and so I will definitely sell

These once I’m happy with the the overall taste myself you still at the taste of it but the dough is not fully proof are you upset with the texture of the dough or not totally upset but yeah it definitely needs more proof so round two will be better huh

Right yeah you can see it you can see the general feel of it is okay mhm but it’s just not light enough meaning it’s too translucent at this stage a common misnomer I think amongst newer Bakers is misjudging a lack of fermentation with underbaked product so if you look

Closely on the inside of this this crumb which clearly needs more fermentation time we’ve we’ve decided there’s a translucent quality to it it it has the appearance of raw dough it’s actually just I think really really dense stove uh that’s it’s more like the skull right like that’s not raw either that’s a

Cooked product it’s gelatinized which the same thing happens in bread baking the the actual crumb gelatinizes over time so this is a gelatinized breadcrumb but that translucence tells you something it tells you that there was a lot of room for expansion still left like all the energy still stored inside the same is

True of croissants if you don’t prove a croissant long enough then you have the same quality in the Crum you don’t get an open honeycomb you get a dense thing that looks more like butter like melted butter bread also it you get a denser crumb uh more translucent so the point

I’m trying to make is it’s important not to misjudge that because baking this longer does not improve the result it’s a fermentation issue uh and we need need to be pushing the pretzels we have in the proofer longer than reevaluating them would I still eat this pretzel absolutely probably I’ll give it to

Probably the team to enjoy but I think round two will be better right so next batch of pretzels are we going to blast freeze them for a moment right I think should we take two trays now we should probably also do these croissants yeah we can do those right away so maybe take

One tray yeah okay the one that you feel most developed but they’re probably all the same I mean it certainly feels better than this morning’s and the two croissants these I think we’re still going to have to bake in the rack oven though so we’ll use a

Sil pth yeah one of the small ones 5 minutes in the freezer okay one for you one for Pete you like it yeah it’s uh according to sarum acceptable at a bad place it is in fact if you were in dire need of a pretzle you would probably eat this

It’s still has a lot of growth to do so and it’s because we haven’t really found the right range yet we tried to translate this from a yeasted dough into a sour dough proof dough and that’s the first trial that we do and the thing is everything we do proofs forever and ever

And ever and ever uh and we’re just starting to discover how long forever and ever means for pretzel but give half this to Pete thank you this will probably have to remain part of the process my final flow will probably be shape proof right refrigerator and that

Proof might be and we didn’t even proof at all right we just had them right from the shaping directly to the fridge yeah so now we’re paying for it today um that’s okay it just we have to find the right timing today I don’t know what

Texture I’m looking for like you do and so I yeah it still it still seems it hasn’t proved it’s warming now but it’s it’s not really proofing still after one and a half hours before we pulled the First on uh after we pulled the first ones so yeah it’s just everything just

Takes longer yeah I mean you want to see a volumetric change in the a doubling yeah a doubling would be probably the right amount and the first ones grew 20% I’m starting to suspect that we’re going to have to come back this afternoon and do the last ones it seriously though

Like everything we proof so far anything that’s enriched proofs like six plus SS you know Brios proofs forever the souro croissant in the very beginning the original founder of proof was missing like 5 hours of proofing and the thing is it’s in our name it’s like the thing we do can’t complain it’s

Already in the name in Rhymes okay these are ready to go so we do these first let’s do them these are very delicate yeah you know this wouldn’t be proof if we didn’t also try to make pretzel croissants this a fully proofed croissant this is kind of a

Crazy thing that I’m doing to it because usually by this point handling a croissant at this level of uh proofing is just a very delicate process we are going to bake them in our small rack oven here so the LIE is taking place of egg wash in this case you don’t salt

Them you want to keep the option to eat them with a sweet filling or with the Savory filling so that’s why you don’t salt these no steam either so we’re just going to set about 15 minutes no steam we’ll close the damper we’ll let the LIE

Do its thing I’ll even crank it up a little wow I’m very excited about this uh that was a good idea to try this if you’re making the effort of doing pretzels and you already have the LIE bath around I it kind of makes sense to

Get a two for one oh this was an early shaping experience I can tell by right by the smaller ones so why you only keep them for like a few seconds in here is you only want the the coating of the of the lie and you don’t want it to permeate into the

The actual dough for me it still definitely feels like underdeveloped but yeah probably but it should definitely be more developed like the than the last ones it’ll be very interesting to see the comparison ready ready wow how long did we have it 17 18 minutes yeah 17 so I start with 17

That’s already oil so we can use that oh that’s oil okay for the next batch you can put your glasses on top so we never open this lid without the glasses on oh that’s a good idea it’s a good habit and before I take my gloves off

That I had in the light I wash my hands with the gloves on so you know the gloves are not harmful how does it look like almost too much color for this stage in the bake well this is this is due to the light they’re going to come out really

Maroon dark brown yeah it’s 5 minutes in now give it more time slightly larger poing up a little bit cuz they look about the same size as our final product right now yeah 5 minutes in so maybe closer to what we want maybe they’ll be good in an average

German bakery or a slightly below average cuz the last one was bad so it’s got to go at least to below average yeah it’s an improvement for sure I mean I’m definitely starting to see more life in this dough I’ve seen a fair amount of dough in the proofer I

Can tell you that for me aside from the fact that I don’t know what a pretzel is supposed to feel like before it’s baked but if it’s judging based on other products that we do bake I would still proof this longer but even in the last

45 minutes that we haven’t been in here I do see a meaningful change I’m getting like a bounceback effect right now when I touch the dough it’s filling up with some gases some of the pretzels that I’m seeing here right now are like the same

Size as the ones that are 6 or 7 minutes into the bake so it seems like even in just the last 45 minutes this stuff really started to go and there’s something about exponential growth that needs to be understood in this uh the way that the microbes work because if we

Leave a lot of room for the microbes to uh have food then they will continue to multiply and as they multiply there’s now more microbes that are feeding and releasing the gases that actually caused the proofing to happen so even though 30 or 40 minutes ago it seemed like nothing

Was happening it’s not a linear path it’s this kind of a path I think we’re starting to actually see real proofing activity I’m kind of curious to see what what you think still takes more time yeah I agree sure I’m now starting to see that they’re bigger yep you could

Probably say everything takes four to five times longer without a doubt but it’s nice though it gives you opportunity to to play the time I like that even it’s just about understanding the Rhythm really right and as you said it probably makes more sense to prove them after shaping already before you

Retti them then you don’t have to do the whole freezer process cuz otherwise I think the freezer process becomes essential you you’ve got to develop the skin and how are you going to do that fast it would take you another 2 hours to refrigerate them probably right so I

Think we’re doing what we have to be doing right now but the next time I do these that step with the freezer yeah all right let’s take a peek oh yeah that’s the color actually you look for is this a first for the world a pretzel sourdough croissant yeah

That could be a first in the world actually I think they almost beg for the salt though but the nice thing is you can put Nutella on them now and many people love this it’s a contrast you know this light taste not not salty and then Nutella my kids actually love

It I mean this is just a very very cool thing this is nice I think like you see that and you’re like what is that exactly you kind of know what it is but you don’t know what it is yeah yeah so that’s 17 minutes warning they’re still

On the light side some people like it like that I would probably bake it just a minute more and we should definitely let them cure for 10 15 minutes before we even break open the crumb in the contrast of the outside is going to be beautiful you can already imagine it

Here in the on the edges yeah it’s like a prized possession with pretzel cant so I got the spray bottle ready you can one put one here okay That really brings out the pretzel FL smell yeah I do think the second bake has a little bit more airiness and softness the best is still yet to come okay here we go so I always give you three by the time the third one is in the light you can start pulling out

The first one and uh give it a little rinse last night soap right do you remember that Time I was thinking about that Too okay substantially better I would say the taste that comes from this Li is says makes me smile I think they can stay a minute more a minute more maybe turn them Around Just the ones in the front I guess I