September 27, 2009

And the winner is...

Forgot to flip - Andy's is on the bottom, mine is on the top.



Mine are on the left. Andy's are on the right. Can you tell who the perfectionist is in our family?!


Andy! His pretzels won the bake off! We had fun making our soft pretzels yesterday. Wilson and Luke couldn't choose between us, they gave us both 10's. Then we had Poppy swing by and he tasted them and voted. When my mom and Terry stopped by we had then taste the pretzels too! Terry chose mine and my mom's words were "but I don't know which one is yours!" She totally wasn't biased or anything...! She liked both but her vote went for Andy's. I also voted for Andy's but still like the ones that my recipe makes. His are more buttery - mine are better for you! I've already posted my recipe on the blog. You can find it here. Below is the recipe for the winning pretzels from our bake-off!


Almost Famous Soft Pretzels
1 cup milk
1 pkg instant active dry yeast
3 T light brown sugar, packed
2 1/4 cups flour, plus more for kneading
10 T unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
1 t. salt
1/3 cup baking soda
2 T coarse salt
1. Warm milk in a saucepan until it's about 110; pour into a medium bowl and sprinkle in yeast. Let the yeast soften, about 2 minutes; stir in the brown sugar and 1 cup flour with wooden spoon. Dice 2 T butter and soften; sitr into the mix. Add the remaining 1 1/4 cups flour and the teaspoon of salt to make a sticky dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour if needed, until smooth but still slightly tacky, about 5 minutes. (Andy used my stand mixer with dough hook). Shape into ball, place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap in a warm place until doubled in bulk. About 1 hour.
2. Preheat oven to 450 and grease a large baking sheet. Punch the dough to deflate it, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Roll and stretch each piece with the palms of your hands until you have a 30inch rope. Hold the ends and slap the middle of the rope on the counter as you stretch. Form into a pretzel shape.
3. Dissolve the baking soda in 3 cups of warm water in a shallow baking dish. Gently dip each pretzel in the soda solution, then arrange on baking sheet and sprinkle with coarse salt. Bake 10-12 minutes.
4. Melt the remaining 8 T of butter in a shallow dish. Dip the hot pretzels in the butter, turning to coat. Place on a wire rack and let excess butter drip off.

3 comments:

Debbie said...

Love you "Lyss" but Andy's pretzels sure look good. I think you both are winners..I agree with the boys "10"!

Hua said...

Pretzels... I have always wanted to know how to make it at home. Thank you!

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Laura said...

I laughed out loud when I saw the picture of the pretzels bc mine would look like yours and my husbands would look like your husbands! I'm not good at making things look pretty, but who cares when they taste good, right? You probably remember that from cake pops.
btw, B would be a "green" from today's meeting.