For years I believed that soft baked pretzels were difficult to make and I have never been brave enough to try them before. There are a lot of steps in the process but if you follow the directions carefully, they are actually not difficult to make at all. In fact, I quite liked making them and I was super chuffed with how they turned out. They were soft and chewy on the inside and slightly crunchy on the outside and the stuffing was divine. The great thing is you can easily change up what goes on the inside, depending on your mood. I can imaging them with cinnamon sugar and vegan cream cheese, or with pizza toppings. So many options!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWEhlX1Vc5Q
Stuffed Beer Pretzels Ingredients:
- 1 1/4 cup room temp. beer (warm water will work too)
- 2 1/4 tsp. yeast
- 1 tbsp. sugar
- 3 1/4 cup flour
- 1/3 tsp. salt
Stuffing Ingredients:
- 1 bunch basil
- 5 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup grape tomatoes, sliced in half
- coconut oil
- 1/4 cup pine nuts (sunflower seeds work too)
Directions:
- Heat oven to 350 degrees. Stir water, sugar and beer together and let proof for 10 minutes until foamy.
- Stir in flour and salt until it forms a dough. Oil the ball of dough and bowl and let rise for 1 hour.
- While dough is rising, roast garlic and tomatoes for 20 minutes.
- Once garlic is done roasting, add basil, oil, garlic and pine nuts to food processor until coarsely ground.
- Mash together with tomatoes.
- Once the dough is done rising (it should have at least doubled in size), divide into 8 equal sized balls and let rest another 10 minutes.
- Roll dough into a thin rectangle using a rolling pin (I don’t have one so I used a glass bottle).
- Spread the tomato-pesto mixture thinly toward the bottom half of the dough and gently roll up. Form into a U-shape and twist to form the pretzel shape.
- Heat oven to 450 degrees. In a large pot, add 4 cups of water and 1/2 cup of baking soda over medium-high heat, but do not allow it to rolling boil (if it is boiling too much, it may damage the pretzels)
- Once the water is hot and the baking soda is dissolved, gently add pretzels, one at a time for 30 seconds each.
- After removing them from the water, sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and bake until golden brown (about 10 minutes).
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