This weekend I made what might be my favorite thing from Modernist Bread - Modernist Pretzels!
The first thing you do is mix up Methocel F50 with water and let it hydrate for 18 hours.
This is what it looks like right after some immersion blender action.
Then 12 hours before make a poolish Here it is right before it's used, nice and bubbly.
Mix the water, poolish, and a bunch of other things including flour until full gluten development and you end up with something like this:
It's coated with oil for it's fermenting step.
After 90 mins with no folds it grows:
Make this into 7 ~140g pretzels. I had a bit more dough so 2 were a little bigger.
These are proofed, I did 5 in my oven on proof and 2 in my steam oven on proof.
As I proofed them I got the lye all setup:
Safety First!
Post proof they bake for ~10 mins:
Don't really look like preztels yet, face down into lye and add some salt, bake for 5 more mins and you get these:
Turns out they come out OK in both the steam oven and the regular oven. These are super tasty!
