I’ve been obsessed with pretzels for years now. Not the hard ones but rather the soft ones and even more so if they’re covered in cinnamon sugar. My problem is that I can never finish a whole pretzel so these pretzel bites are perfect for me.
I LOVE how these mini pretzels turned out. They’re golden on the outside and really soft on the inside. It’s one of those things you can’t stop eating once you begin.
You can use the dough to make large pretzels as well as buns and sticks. You can also use savoury or sweet toppings. In this case it was cinnamon sugar but it could be cheese, sesame seeds, coarse sea salt, oregano, etc.
It’s an incredible snack if you’re having friends over to watch a movie or even for kids. Now that the football world cup is approaching I know that I’m definitely making these in a savoury version to watch the games. And why not, maybe some sweet ones as well.
Before going into the oven we dip these in hot water with bicarbonate of soda. Don’t skip this step because it helps them go golden faster, keeping the inside soft.
Ingredients
For the dough
- 350 g all purpose flour
- 2 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 g instant yeast
- 240 ml lukewarm milk (can be lactose-free)
- 20 g unsalted butter melted and cooled to room temperature
- vegetable oil to cover the dough
For the bicarbonate of soda coating
- 750 ml hot water
- 4 tbsp bicarbonate of soda
For the cinnamon sugar coating
- 100 g unsalted butter, melted
- 200 g brown sugar
- 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
Instructions
For the dough
- Put all the ingredients in a stand mixer's bowl and use the hook accessory to mix them up. Knead on the machine for 10min. If you're doing whits by hand then you need to knead for 15min.
- Form a ball with the dough, cover in vegetable oil and let rest covered with a kitchend cloth so it can proof. This will take 60-90min or until you nee it's doubled in size. Ideally leave the dough in a warm place such as inside your oven with the light on or on top of the fridge.
- Knock out the air from the dough and divide in 6 more or less equal pieces.
- Stretch each piece making a snake-like shape. From that cut the pillos that will make our pretzel bites. At all times keep the dough as well as the bites under a kitchen cloth to prevent them from drying out.
- Let proof 15min covered on the counter top.
For the bicarbonate of soda coating
- Add the bicarbonate of soda to the water and dip a few pretzel pieces at a time for a couple of seconds.
- Transfer them onto a baking tray with silpat or baking paper (ideally silpat). At this moment if you want to make them savoury you can sprinkle them with sesame seeds, coarse sea salt, oregano, cheese, etc.
- In our case they go straight into the oven preheated at 200C por 8-10min or until golden.
For the cinnamon sugar coating
- Mix the cinnamon and the sugar.
- Dip the pretzel bites in butter and then cover with the cinnamon sugar mix.
