Soft Pretzels With Sweet Mustard Dipping Sauce

We (The Bearded Gamer and I) recently bought our plane tickets for our trip to the States in September. We are going over to go to the wedding of some very good friends of ours in South Carolina. After that, we are going to explore the east coast for a bit and finish off in New York City. 

I am so excited.

I cannot even begin to explain my excitement and I have started making a list of all the places I want to visit when I am there. I am not sure how I am going to be able to wait until September.

 Then I started thinking about pretzels. This is the snack that first comes to mind when I think of New York City. I know that once I am there I won't end up buying one of these (especially with places like this to descend upon). So to suppress the travel demon within, I decided to do a spot of pretzel making. I had no recipes for pretzels in my heaving recipe book collection, so (like many times before) I turned to Google for help. 

I found two recipes on the one site - Foodnetwork.com. The first recipe by Alton Brown is based on using a mixer. I loath being reminded that I don't own a Kitchenaid (with a dough hook)- so that was a strike against that recipe. However, as I read on, Alton's Pretzels needed to be boiled in a mixture of bi-carb soda and water before baking. I liked this; this I could do and it I was interested to see what would happen here. 

Pretzels just after boiling

The other recipe, called Almost Famous Soft Pretzels seemed much more aimed at the cook-sans-Kitchenaid - but it asks you to dip the freshly baked pretzels in 8 tablespoons of melted butter so.....yeah....no. 

So I mixed the two. The first half (the dough making half) is pretty much the Almost Famous recipe, while the boiling and baking part is all Alton Brown. There was a recipe for a sweet mustard dipping sauce which piqued my interest on the Almost Famous page as well. This sauce is sweet, tangy, spicy and creamy - yes, all of those things - and it was delish. It is dead easy to make and dipping the warm pretzel into it, well, it was just pure pleasure.

"These pretzels are making me thirsty!"

Rolling out the dough to make the pretzel shape was tricky - the dough is rather sticky and elastic, but a good tip that I read on one of the recipes was to hold either end up and thwack the middle of the long cylinder on the bench. This helped and I felt rather professional while doing it, a little bit like those people who toss pizza dough. The shaping was a little tricky, even after watching the YouTube video that I have linked to below in the recipe. They may not look like perfection, but they sure did taste like it!


I must say, though, the pretzels still haven't suppressed the travel demon within - it looks like I am just going to have to wait it out to go to America. In the meantime I do however have a short trip to Perth (over Easter) to look forward to. And next week I will be also taking a cyber trip and setting up camp (for a spell) at a very beautiful blog: stay tuned next week for the link!

Soft Pretzels With Sweet Mustard Dipping Sauce
Recipe for pretzels adapted from two different recipes: Almost Famous Soft Pretzels from Foodnetwork.com and Alton Brown's Home-made Soft Pretzels.

• Recipe for Sweet Mustard Dipping Sauce is straight from  Almost Famous Soft Pretzels.
• For the Soft Pretzels
• Makes 6
• 1 cup milk
• 1 packet of dried yeast
• 3 tbs of brown sugar, lightly packed
• 2 1/4 cups of plain flour, plus extra for kneading
• 2 tbs unsalted butter, softened
• 1 tsp of plain, fine salt
• 1/3 cup of bi-carb soda
• Yolk of 1 egg mixed with 1 tbs water
• 2 tablespoons of course salt or sea salt

Warm the milk in a saucepan over a medium flame. Tip the milk into a bowl and pour in the yeast to soften. Stir in the sugar and one cup of flour and mix, bubbles should start to appear. Stir in the butter, fine salt and the remaining one and quarter cups of flour. Stir until you have a sticky dough. 

Turn the dough out on to a clean, floured surface and knead for around 5 minutes. The dough should be smooth but still sticky. You can add more flour to your hands as you knead if you want. Shape the dough into a ball, then place it in a lightly greased bowl and cover it with cling film. Stand the bowl somewhere warm to rise and leave until it has doubled in size. Mine took about 90 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 230C and prepare a baking tray with lightly oiled baking paper. After the dough has risen, turn it out again onto your clean, lightly floured surface and punch the dough to deflate it. 
Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and roll each piece out to about 40 cm. It helps to hold each end and whack the middle on the bench. The dough shouldn't break and should be elastic.
Rather than type out instructions for shaping the pretzels, here is a YouTube video I have found.
Boil about 10 cups of water in a large pot with the bi-carb soda. Once you have a rolling boil, add the prezels two by two to the pot using a slotted spoon. Leave in the water for three minutes before removing and adding to the baking tray.
Brush each boiled pretzel with the egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the course salt or sea salt.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool the pretzels on a wire rack while you make the sauce.


For the Sweet Mustard Dipping Sauce
1/4 cup mayonnaise

• 1/4 cup dijon mustard
• 3 tbs brown sugar- tightly packed
• 1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
• Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until smooth.

Serve the pretzels warm with the dipping sauce.