That does look easy! Would it work with whole wheat flour? Maybe half whole wheat?
Yes! I have tried it and it does.
Iâm sure theyâre delicious!
But what it really made me think of, is how overused the phrase is, â_____ is easy.â I think itâs the contemporary version of, âHereâs an interesting fact:â When I read about that rule in Strunk and White, I thought it strange and archaic, not something Iâd encountered, ever- because, partially, Strunk and White had warned people away from overusing it!
I wish there was a similar rule about âsuch and such is easyâ. Now I want to make some pretzels.
The baking soda replaces Lye in the commercial recipe. But baking soda isnât as base as llyeâbut itâs much, much safer.
However, you can use a trick to chemically change the Sodium Bicarbonate into Sodium Carbonate. Just heat a cup of baking soda in the oven at about 300 for an hour.
Then make a solution of 1 cup of the soda to 6 cups water.
This gives you a stronger alkali solution than just baking sodaâŚbut still much safer than lye.
Also, you can use this to boil noodles âchinese styleâ the noodles that come out rather sticky like ramen noodle. Even premade noodle work with this.
Actually, the opposite is true. Because a good Brezel (as we spell it in South-West Germany) or Brezn (as the people of Bavaria spell it) has to fulfill the following criteria:
The forward side has to be crispy. So the crossed parts are very small, somewhat conic. The leach has to be applied in a way, that the incrustation is flaking in big pieces. This has to happen on the bigger back side, which has to be cut open, so a white smile is presenting the inner parts of the back side, like a mouth.
Here a foto of a Brezel which is done right:
http //www.stuttgart-tourist.de/img/w/b/a/h/e/k/c/d/brezeln.jpeg
*** SWABIAN DETECTED ***
I am a crap baker. Like seriously crap. Thereâs a handful of things I do well, and pretzels is something Iâve been experimenting with since I was a kid. But if youâre a crap baker like me you might get curious about this. It turns out a damn decent pretzel, and IIRC correctly doesnât contain anything you wouldnât otherwise find in a pretzel recipe. One of a couple decent brands of bread mixes Iâve run into lately (Hodgeson Mills is the other major one, and then thereâs various Irish ones).
But otherwise in terms of pretzels keep this in mind: Do use the parchment, not the the pretzels will stick all that bad even to an un-greased pan, but the alkaline bath will cause them to react with the metal. Iâve got an aluminium sheet pan with now permanent pretzel shaped markings on it. Also donât bag or otherwise seal up the pretzels afterwards, especially when warm. The trapped moisture will melt off the salt and ruin the texture. Theyâre fine in the open air or in a paper bag.
These really are easy to make! My son and I just baked up a batch and are eating them now (Iâm typing between bites). Theyâre not 100% like real Laugenbrezeln, but close enough and really tasty. Iâm going to have to try that baked soda trick and see how it works.
Lye isnât that much dangerous, if you wear goggles and the concentrations arenât too high. (If it is hot and concentrated, it will also warrant a face shield, gloves, and perhaps an apron.)
Finding food-grade lye on the open for-the-plebes market is however likely somewhat difficult. For some obscure reason you can get the drain-cleaner kind easily but thereâs no guarantee that there will not be contaminants from the industrial manufacture (is the mercury electrolysis process still in use?), or if it is some byproduct. Grumble.
If its dangerous enough to recommend/require eye/face protection and gloves itâs probably âtoo dangerousâ for most people to consider keeping a big steaming pot of it in their kitchen. Though IIRC if your using food grade lye for pretzels you can just brush/spray it on and bake. I think the heated bath was an adaptation to bases that arenât as strong (I remember hearing about it being borrowed from bagels?).
But like you said food grade lye is harder to find, and Iâve great luck with baked soda in applications where baking soda isnât enough but you wonât/canât fuck with lye.
Thank you!
BTW: if you ever come to Germany, Iâm recommending Fidelis Bäck in Wangen im Allgäu. Theyâre baking for 500 years now, and their Brezeln are of the best I ever got â and I know a lot of different ones 
A last comment:
These are Brezeln of the parents of JĂźrgen Klinsmann. I can recommend this bakery, too. Years ago I was a frequent buyer when I was working in Stuttgart. For the people whoâre baking themselves: here you can see the form which a Brezel shoud have.
This is a great opportunity for homemade honey mustard.
Honey mustard recipe: equal parts honey and dijon mustard, and optionally a dash of lemon juice for zing. Do not use mayonnaise, no matter what some dude on the internet says. You can mix up a whole squeeze bottleâs worth at once, or you can mix it in a little dipping cup for a single serving of pretzels. Great on sandwiches, too.
I never could find it in stores either, but amazon:
Potassium hydroxide is available as well and works indistinguishably for pretzels.
In our house, we float the formed pretzels for 1 minute in a dilute-ish room temperature KOH bath. I didnât realize that other people were boiling them - no wonder they were so worried!
Whatâs the advantage - does the resulting pretzel taste better, have better textureâŚ?
Lye/hydroxide treated brezn come out darker and presumably with a slightly crunchier crust, while a lesser alkali treatment results in a lighter coloured crust.
