This week’s recipe is Whole Wheat Cinnamon Sugar Pretzels. I am a big fan of making bread, finding the chemical magic of yeast to be a fascinating. We make a lot of pizza and calzones in this household. I haven’t made pretzels before though and I was really excited to see how boiling the dough in a baking soda bath would change things.
The recipe started off with making a half whole wheat, half bread flour dough in a stand mixer using the dough hook. The dough came together fairly quickly. It started off as a rather chunky mix but came together into a ball of dough after a few minutes.
My husband and I took a nature walk while we waited for the dough to rise, to kill time, but also to help offset our plan to eat a whole bunch of pretzels.
When we got back I was pleased to see that the dough had risen considerably. I divvied up the dough into 9 pieces and then worked on shaping them into some sort of pretzel shape. I was kind of surprised that it was fairly easy to do, though I did find that pinching the dough was easier and faster than rolling it out. The baking soda bath was also pretty straightforward. I was a little concerned though when the water and pretzels started foaming a lot mid way through, did that happen to anyone else? I used an egg wash for half of the recipe and sprinkled them with salt. The other half got a generous amount of butter, cinnamon, and sugar when they were out of the oven
I love recipes that say “Dig in! What are you waiting for?” Well, I paraphrase, this recipe didn’t say exactly that, but we only had to wait a few minutes for them to cool before we could enjoy the results. While I am a huge fan of butter+cinnamon+sugar, I wasn’t super crazy about how these came out. I kept kind of wishing that I was eating a cinnamon roll instead, or wishing that I had cream cheese so that I could have eaten it like a bagel. My husband enjoyed the salted versions with some spicy mustard, and polished off two in short order. If I made them again I think I’d stick to savory versions, maybe even a garlic salt cheese topping. Or try to sweeten the dough a bit to complement the awesome topping a bit more.
Busy Lizzy Bakes 
Liz, your pretzels look great! We make a lot of pizza and calzones, too, but I wasn’t very inspired to try pretzels. I really like your idea of a garlic salt and cheese topping – maybe it was the sweetness that threw me off. But I made up a recipe I’d missed before: Carrot Coconut Scones. I highly recommend them!
I only tried sweet variations, your salty ones look extra-good! I always get impatient waiting for dough to rise – a walk is a great idea.
Looks like a lot of us had the same experience of wanting a sweeter dough for the cinnamon-sugar topping. I covered half of mine with shredded Asiago and Parm cheeses, and I liked those way more than the sweet ones! Beautiful photos, by the way. 🙂
Pretty! I think I’m with you – I’d like butter and pretzel salt rather than cinnamon sugar.
My baking soda bath was quite foamy, too — I had to clean up a bunch of splatters all over the range afterwards (and I noticed that the water was tan when I was done!). Agreed that sweet might not be the best way to go with these pretzels… I wish we had tried mustard with the savory ones! Great job!