A penchant for pretzels

I love pretzels. New York style, soft, chewy pretzels. It's a rather strange love, since I've never been to New York, and nor have I ever had a proper American soft pretzel, bought from a street vendor. I think the obsession derives from my equally strong obsession with American TV shows set in NYC...Friends and Sex and the City being two of my favs. In New Zealand, I've never seen anyone selling soft pretzels, and so to satisfy the obsession I was forced to make them myself. The same seems to hold in the UK (well, I'm sure somewhere in London you can buy a pretzel, but up here in grand 'ol Darlington, there's not a pretzel to be seen). I tried several different recipes before deciding that I liked this one the best - the pretzels are chewy, slightly sweet and have that great salty pretzel shell that I assume (from the looks of the ones on TV!!) pretzels are meant to have. They are wonderful straight out of the oven, get chewier over the next couple of days (actually, to be honest, they are really best eaten within a day of making. After that the salt on them tends to liquefy and the dough really requires a considerable chewing effort to get through...not that this has stopped me from munching through them of course!) and they are also great with mustard to dip them in and a cold beer alongside! This time I topped some of them with sesame seeds and poppy seeds as well as the mandatory sea salt, but this is mostly decorative - they don't need it for flavour. Anyway, here's the recipe - I hope you think about trying them one lazy weekend!

What-I-Imagine-Are-New-York-Style-Soft-Pretzels
3-3 1/2 cups strong flour
4 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp yeast
1 cup warm water
+ bicarb of soda, egg (beaten for egg wash), and plenty of rock or sea salt

In a large bowl, mix water and sugar together until sugar is dissolved. Add salt and then yeast and stir gently. Add flour - enough to make a fairly stiff dough. Knead as best you can (I've found the dough to be fairly tough and difficult to knead sometimes - just bash it about as much as you can. The key thing here is really to make sure all the flour is thoroughly combined and it resembles bread dough as much as possible). Return to bowl, cover and leave to rise. (I've found this dough is actually pretty slow to rise - probably because it's so dense. This time I mixed the dough and then left it to rise overnight in the fridge which worked out pretty well. You don't have to do this, of course, but just bear in mind that the dough will take at least 2 hours in a warm place to rise otherwise).
Knock dough back, then divide dough into as many pieces as you want pretzels. I got 15 small pretzels out of this bunch, but the smaller the number you have, the larger the pretzels...you get the picture.
Roll each piece of dough out into a long thin snake-like shape (about 30 cm I guess, but I didn't measure), then twist into the pretzel shape. I can't really think how to describe this, so I've taken some pics to help out (below). Set each shaped pretzel to rest on a floured bench. (don't use too much flour while you are rolling out the pretzels because then you won't get them to stick to themselves when you shape them).
Bring a large pot of water to the boil, then reduce to a simmer, add the bicarb of soda and then gently put a pretzel in and allow it to simmer for about 2 mins on each side. This is what gives pretzels their distinct taste (or so I've read!) and it helps make them chewy, like bagels.
Place pretzels on baking tray, brush with egg wash and sprinkle with salt.
Bake at 225deg (C) for about 10-15 mins or until golden brown.

Enjoy!!

Rolled out snake of pretzel dough...
Starting to shape them
Twisting...
Et voila...
Simmering the raw pretzels...
Shaped, boiled, egg-washed, salted and ready for baking
Golden and delicous! Just try to resist them!