Looked around for an alternative to a lye dip for soft pretzels, Adam Ragusea suggested using cooked baking soda as a substitute. 10,000% will be doing this again! Used Weissman's soft pretzel recipe but subbed the cooked baking soda in boiling water for 30 seconds instead of room temp lye for 10 seconds.
https://www.joshuaweissman.com/recipes/best-homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe
by prakticaltickles
8 Comments
Yes, some of them at the bottom of the picture look a little flat and sad in places. Miso the cat decided that the towel covered baking trays on the counter were a spot for him to lay 😒
Burn off your baking soda in the oven at low temp until the soda is twice as fine and annoyingly dry to the touch. It’ll work even better.
I also refuse to have lye in my kitchen and have been subbing home made washing soda for years for bagels.
If you heat baking soda in an oven, it becomes sodium carbonate, which is much more alkaline than baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). You want to Google the temp and time, but it’s simple and a closer replace,ent for lye (though not quite there).
TIL people use lye for this lol I’ve only ever known of baking soda
I’d never even considered using anything other than baking soda… do commercial bakeries even use lye?
For the chem nerds: Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) reacts with heat to make a stronger alkaline product, sodium carbonate (soda ash), releasing water and carbon dioxide as byproducts.
2NaHCO₃ —> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2
I usually just use baking soda in hot water for a lye dip replacement. Definitely going to try cooking it those look amazing! Thanks.
For a pretzel crust on my bagels I use off the shelf baking soda and brown sugar 2:1 tbsp for 6 cups of water, boil it, then dip for two minutes on each side. Never tried lye but it works perfect for me.