This Chemical Makes German Pretzels Chewy and Golden Brown | America’s Test Kitchen

To make great German-style pretzels, you need a chemical shortcut with food-grade lye. Today, Bridget Lancaster shows Julia Collin Davison how lye contributes to that golden-brown shine and snappy bite, highlighting the importance of letting the dough rest between stages of shaping. After they dip the dough in a diluted lye solution (with protective gear in place), Julia explains lye’s chemical effect on proteins and starches, and the best way to make these pretzels with maximum ease–and safety.

Laugenbrezeln (German Lye Pretzels) Recipe: https://cooks.io/3Jf1EgH

00:00 Intro
00:25 Making The Dough
02:22 Shaping The Dough
07:18 Dipping The Dough
11:50 Trying The Laugenbrezeln (German Lye Pretzels)

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– Pretzels are an integral
part of daily life in Germany, whether you’re swinging by the bakery to pick one up for breakfast or lunch, or enjoying one a little later with a beer and a good friend. And today, my good friend
Bridget is going to show us how to make German-style pretzels at home. – Authentic brezeln. – Brezeln.
– Exactly. They’re really dark,
almost a mahogany color. Starts with the dough. Very simple dough. And we want pretzels that have a big chew, a little bit of tug to them. So we’re using bread flour here. And I’m really going to highly recommend that you weigh your flour for this recipe. You’re going to need to
scale later on anyway, so it’s very important here. This is 12-3/4 ounces of flour. That’s about 2-1/3 cups. I’m going to add a teaspoon of table salt. And then a teaspoon of instant yeast, rapid-rise yeast, whatever you have. Just going to mix these together. All right. And I’m going to add a cup of room temperature water. Just room temperature, we
don’t want to slow down the fermentation process. And then two tablespoons
of unsalted butter. These have been softening,
nice and soft, kind of squishy. They’re going to give a
little bit of richness to the pretzel. Okay, so this is going
to go onto the machine. And now I’m going to turn it to low speed, just till this dough comes together. Should only be a minute. So the majority of the
flour’s been moistened. Now, at this point, because there’s not a lot
of loose flour in there, I can increase the speed. Otherwise, you get a big
cloud burst of flour. Increasing it to medium speed. And we’re going to let this go until the dough feels nice and smooth. That’s going to take about six minutes. (mixer whirs) All right. Let’s take
a look at this dough. Let me just put this
out onto my countertop. It’s not floured. We don’t
really need to flour it. I’m just going to knead
this briefly, at this point. All I need to do is kind of scoop this into a little round ball. There we go. And I’ve got a greased bowl here. I’m going to add it to the bowl. I like to flip it upside down
so that top is a little bit covered with the vegetable oil spray. – [Julia] So it doesn’t dry out. – Exactly. Cover it tightly. We’re going to leave
this at room temperature until it’s just about doubled in size. And that’s only going
to take about an hour. – [Julia] That’s not long. – All right, our dough has
risen for about an hour, so I’m just going to turn
this out onto my counter. You don’t really need to manipulate this too much at this point. We’re going to make six pretzels today, so I need to cut this into six pieces. So I’ll cut it in half. This is always where it gets
a little tricky, is thirds. So what I do is I kind of just
turn this into a cylinder. Makes it easier to figure
out thirds that way. Okay, so that looks great. So now, I’m going to need your help because what we’re going to do is we’re going to shape these
into a taut little ball here. Really turn it in on
itself, just like that. Just want to put a damp cloth over these. It’s about 10 minutes. Let them relax before
we try to shape them, roll them out towards a pretzel shape. If we started to roll them out now, they’re just going to snap
back like a nasty old teenager. (Julia chuckles) – Like a bad habit? – That’s exactly right. So we’ll leave these for 10 minutes and we’ll come right back. – [Julia] All right. – So I’m going to take this
first round of dough here. I’m going to place this
first little dough ball, seam side up, right here. And I’m just going to
use the palm in my hand to start flattening it out. Get rid of any air bubbles. So after I’ve kind of pressed this out, I’m going to just take my rolling pin and really knock out
any remaining bubbles. And then I just want to press this out to a four by eight-inch rectangle. And now I’m going to take
the end farthest away from me and start rolling it back to me. And I want to be pretty tight about this. This is going to help
to shape the structure and ensure that the pretzels
retain that round shape. All right, and there we go. So now I’m going to pinch
this really, really well. All right. And now, we’re
going to start to roll this out to a nine-inch rope. So I’m just going to start to kind of work it out a little bit. – Okay.
– And see how we are. – There you go. – How about that? All right, so this is going
to go right back up here to our sleeping dough buns. – I get it. You’re shaping them slowly because they’ll start to snap back because you use bread
flour, high protein content. – Exactly.
– They’re snappy. – Exactly. And you know, dough, when
it starts to snap back, you really, there’s only
one thing you can do, let it rest.
– Yep. – Fantastic. This one goes right here. – All right.
– There we go. Now we’re going to start back over on the first one that we did. So it’s had some time to
rest before we move on. All right, so now, we’re going
to take this nine-inch rope and we’re going to turn
it into a 28-inch rope. – Wow. – And because the rulers are usually only about 18 inches in length, this is what I have been doing at home. I’ve just been taping a
28-inch space on my counter so it’s easy enough for me to see. – [Julia] That’s pretty smart. – So again, I’m going
to start at the middle and start working it out. And you can see it just really wants to give up the ghost at this point. But if it starts to really
snap back, not a problem. You just put the damp towel back onto it and let it rest for a few more minutes. – Okay. – Let’s see.
– All right. – There we go.
– Nicely done. – We are making the beautiful
Bavarian U pretzels. So I’m going to cross it over and I’m going to cross it over again. You don’t want to do it halfway, you want to do it just below halfway. That way you get some nice,
big, what I call mouse ears. When this comes over like that, and you push it in like that, and you separate that out like that, you get a nice shaped pretzel. I’m going to place this
pretzel right here. So we’ve got a couple more to do, but we’re going to leave
these here uncovered on the counter for about 10 minutes. And after that, I’m going to cover these, put them into the fridge. You want to leave them in
there for at least two hours, but you can do this up
to 24 hours in advance. – [Julia] Gotcha. – Are you ready to take your
cooking to the next level? – [Julia] Introducing the
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notes alongside each recipe. – [Julia] Plus, there’s
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makes an excellent gift. – [Julia] Get your copy today
at americastestkitchen.com. – Welcome to my laboratory. (Julia chuckles) – It is a little scary that
I had to put all this on to make pretzels. – Yeah, but this is a safe thing to do. Authentic pretzels are
dipped in a lye solution before they’re baked, and
that does so many things. It gives them a beautiful deep color. It kind of sets the exterior, gets that really shiny taut exterior. It gives it a really
beautiful mineral flavor. Lye is incredibly caustic, and that’s why we’re dressed like this. I mean, when you think about alkalize, we often think about baking soda. And we do have a version that you can use that you don’t need to get
all suited up for at home. But baking soda has a much lower pH. You’re not going to get the same results. I think if you’re in love with pretzels, you want to do this. – Okay.
– All right. These were in the fridge about two hours, and we’re ready to move on to our dip. So everything is about
precision and weight. So I’ve got a bowl here on my scale. I mentioned before,
it’s always a good idea to weigh your flour. And I want to measure
1,000 grams of water. And you want to make sure that this water is on the cool side because
once the lye goes in there, it’s going to kind of set
off a heating reaction. And heat in the water that
we’re going to dip in, it can cause the pretzels
to kind of fall apart. All right. Boop.
– Oh, on the nose. – All right. This is lye.
It is a food-grade lye. It’s actually safe. Once these are baked, it deactivates the lye,
so there’s no harm there. But we’ve premeasured out 40
grams of the lye crystals. And when I add it to the water, and you always want to
add the lye to the water and not the water to the lye, because we want to make sure
that this little bit of lye comes in contact with a big
amount of water quickly. If you do it in reverse,
as you’re adding the water, it can actually cause a
little bit more of a reaction. So I’m just going to stand
with my head back a little bit and sprinkle in the 40
grams of lye right there. As you can see, it doesn’t really dissolve on its own very easily, so
I’m just going to use a whisk. – [Julia] And the
counters are covered too. – Yeah, the counters are covered because whatever the lye
mixture comes in contact, it can actually mar or mark the surface. We don’t want that. Perfect. All right, so we want to
put this face side down into the lye, and we’re going
to let this sit in there, kind of submerging it
every once in a while, for about 15 seconds. All right, I’m going to
move this to a wire rack set over a parchment-lined baking sheet. I’m going to dip the rest. Now, these are going to
be moved to our sheet pan. I’m going to start with the first one that was sitting there draining. And you know, a silicone baking mat is really the best tool for the job here. These tend to get really, really sticky. Right, Jul, would you mind
handing me that pretzel salt. Love pretzel salt. This salt does not melt very
easily when it gets wet, and that’s how you get those
beautiful little coarse grains. You can use kosher salt, but we’ve got more instructions
on our website there. Now, look. Fantastic. Now, before we put these in the oven, we want to give our gloves a good rinsing because we’re going to
handle the oven handle. – [Julia] Makes sense. – [Bridget] I’m ready to bake these. I’m going to put these in a 475° oven. We want these to get a
really deep, dark color, and these are only going to be in there for about 12 minutes. (pan clatters) – Soaking the pretzels in a lye solution before baking is crucial if you want them to have
a shiny brown exterior. Lye or sodium hydroxide makes
a powerfully alkaline solution that chemically transforms
the protein and starch on the surface of the pretzel. When dipped into this solution, the dough’s long protein chains break down into short
chains and amino acids. Meanwhile, the starch in the dough unravels and starts to gel. Then when the pretzel is baked, the alkalize dough transforms again. The gelatinized starch on the surface sets into a smooth, glossy crust. And the wealth of amino
acids readily take part in the Maillard reactions, giving the crust a deep brown color and unique pretzely flavor. And that’s why lye is crucial if you want that authentic,
dark, German pretzel style. – Do not take off the gloves. – (chuckles) Hi there. – Leave the goggles on,
don’t take off the gloves, because we, and I mean you, have got to do some cleanup here. – Oh, okay. – Yeah, we’re going to
touch some of these things that had lye on it. Just really good safety practice, until everything is put
away, keep these on. – Okay! (both laugh) – And we have got all the entire procedure on our website so people can go on there and feel very safe about how to clean up. – All right. (pan clatters) Oh-oh-oh. – Pretzel delivery. – [Julia] Goodness. – These are absolutely beautiful. And you cannot get that color
without that dip in the lye. Mm, that was just 12 minutes in the oven, but now we got to let
them sit for five minutes, just to let them set up a little bit. But you can serve these
at room temperature, I guarantee they’re absolutely gorgeous. – All right. I’m so ready to try these. – I would love for you to try one. – Mm.
– You want to go for it? I’m going to take one as well. Now, depending on what
part of Germany you’re from or how you grew up eating these, some people eat them with softened butter. I think that’s delicious. Of course, sausages are always great. Pair that open. You can kind of smear it into the butter, or you can use this to spread. – All right. Oh. Look at that. That is gorgeous. – Mm. Did you get it without the butter? – Mm-hmm. – Even without the butter. – That’s not like a pretzel
I’ve ever had before. I mean, this is proper bread. – Yes. But I’m going to show you what I like to serve these with. – [Julia] Okay. – Be right back. (Julia laughs) – That is awesome! For full episodes of your
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