2014 Cooking Club Week 34: Pretzel Rolls

Now mix this with the paddle until it all comes together in one large sticky mess (shouldn't take more than 30 seconds). This really is too sticky so far - look at how the dough is sticking to the bowl and tearing away in strings. We're nowhere near okay here, so let's go ahead and add in the next quarter cup of plain flour. And we mix again...

Notice that the dough has all come together in one mass and is pulling away from the sides of the bowl? That's good, that's what we want to see. We're almost at the right consistency now. This is the big thing about making a dough - get the mix right and the rest is a doddle. So we stop the mixer here and take a peek. Open the mixer, and clean the dough off the paddle with your hands and take a look.



See how it's still stuck to my fingertips? Means it doesn't have enough flour yet. How much you need to add depends on the humidity in the kitchen, the flour's age and how it was stored and so on, so you basicly add in the 2.5 cups at the start and then add in more until the dough's done. Most of the time, it takes three cups. Sometimes not so much; once or twice it's needed a little more. Add another quarter cup at this stage, spin the dough for a few seconds until it all comes together again, then stop the mixer again, open it, clean off the paddle and check your fingertips.



All clean. Okay, we should have about the right amount of flour in there now. Take off that paddle and attach your dough hook. Now do nothing. Not a thing. Don't touch it. Go clean up the mess you've made so far, go read a book, go have coffee, whatever. This is autolysing, and it's letting the flour start to absorb the liquid in the dough. It's a trick taken from making pizza dough, and it gives the final bread's texture a really nice chew. Come back in ten minutes.

It doesn't look so different on the surface, but if you poked it before and poked it now, you'd notice it wasn't as sticky now. Okay, time to use the dough hook. Medium speed for about four minutes will do the trick. Now remove the dough hook, flour a work surface and turn the dough out onto it.

You want to knead it, folding and spinning it for a minute or so, just until it feels nice and satiny. Once it's there, you need to shape it into a ball with a nice tight skin, so basicly you turn over the dough so the part you were repeatedly folding into is underneath, and then you sort of scoop and turn the dough - look, it's easier to show this, honestly:



By the way, in my defence, that is not a douchebaggy bling bracelet thing. It's a medical bracelet (me and penicillin do not get on). Just saying. Because it seriously looks douchy. Anyway... you should end up with a nice doughball with a tight skin.

Okay, now to shape. No, you do not just squish them up and roll them into a ball, you'd have no internal structure, no decent crust if you did that. Instead, you pick up each piece, tuck the corners under into the middle, and then the new corners get the same treatment and you kinda shape it like that for a few seconds, then you sortof make an ok symbol with your thumb and forefinger and squeeze the doughball out through that, twist the base to secure it, then drop it on the surface from a few inches up, and then do that doughball scoop-and-twist from before only with a smaller doughball. It's easy once you pick up the knack and it doesn't take long to do that.



You'll need two baking trays for this, and you want to line them with parchment paper, but for now just take one of the trays, and line it with twice as much parchment as you need. As you finish each doughball, put it in this tray. When you're done, fold over the parchment to cover and leave it sit for 20 minutes or so.

While the doughballs are proofing, bring the water (best to boil it first in the kettle to save time - takes a kettle and a half for me, your milage may vary) and sugar to a boil in a large wide pot (and you'll want one that's at least six litres in capacity, because when you add the soda it foams up a lot and will boil over quite readily unless there's room in the pot).

Preheat the oven to 210 degrees C (about 425 F) with two racks in there with room between them as well.

When the doughballs have proofed, take that second baking tray, cut the excess parchment off the first tray and line the second one with it.
Now add the baking soda to the boiling water. Once the foaming has died down, take each doughball and drop it in the alkali bath and let it boil for between 30 and 60 seconds (the longer you boil, the chewier the roll). Work with two to three doughballs at a time in the bath, any more is awkward - they puff up quite a bit. After the 30-60 seconds, use a slotted spoon to flip the rolls over (they'll float stably in the bath) and give them the same time on the other side. When done, take out of the bath with the slotted spoon, leave drain into the bath and then put them back on the parchment in the baking trays. The skin looks a bit weird, chill out, that's fine, it's just the effect of the bath. Keep calm and sprinkle the batch with the topping of your choice, if you're using one (I prefer sesame seeds). You could put the topping in a bowl and toss the doughball with them, that works too and you get a very dense coverage; it's a personal preference thing.

BTW folks, as those who were up late last night when this got posted first will have noticed, it had a lot more photos in it originally - I'd missed the new 5-picture rule in the charter (I'm blaming the toddler).

With Faith's permission, here's the link to the original recipe with all the fifty-odd photos and videos and some small things that had to get left out (like a comparison of what knife and scissors cuts look like after baking). If you've not baked bread or made dough before, this might be helpful:

http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2014/08/15/pretzel-rolls/