Sweet Dough Soft Pretzels

I set out to make German Style Pretzels and what I got was more like a sweet bun.  Honestly these made into bun shaped things they would have been perfect and would feel less like failures as pretzels.  But so it goes some times with baking, try to make one thing and make something entirely different. Still taste good though.

Here's a link to my proper German Soft Pretzels.   

This is a heavily modified version of the Pretzel recipe off the King Arthur website.  Basically made it on the cheap.  But a few of the biggest differences in this recipe and the one I posted earlier are that this recipe doesn't use a Baking Soda bath before the final bake, instead relying on sugar coating to give the Pretzel the unique crust.  It doesn't work, but it does make a wonderful sweet bun. After I got over my disappointment that the 'pretzels' didn't work with mustard, I cut them in half and made them into PB&Js and they were wonderful little snacks for work through out the week.   

Ingredients

PRETZELS

170g lukewarm water

227g Sourdough starter, unfed/discard

361g Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

35g Nonfat dry milk

14g Sugar

1 tablespoon butter

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast (1 packet)

TOPPING

1 tablespoon Sugar

28g Water

pretzel salt or Kosher Salt (Large Granular Salt)

28g melted butter, optional

Preparation

Prepare a baking sheet by spraying it with vegetable oil spray, or lining it with parchment paper. 

Mix and knead the dough ingredients — by hand, mixer, or bread machine — to make a cohesive, fairly smooth dough. It should be slightly sticky; if it seems dry, knead in an additional tablespoon or two of water.

Cover the dough and let it rest for 45 minutes. It will rise minimally. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly greased work surface, fold it over a few times to gently deflate it, then divide it into 12 pieces, each weighing about 2 1/4 to 2 1/2 ounces.

Roll each piece of dough into an 18" rope. Shape each rope into a pretzel.

Dissolve the malt in the water. Brush the pretzels with the solution, and sprinkle lightly with coarse pretzel salt.

Bake the pretzels for 25 to 30 minutes, until they're a light golden brown. Note: This is correct; there's no need to let the shaped pretzels rise before baking.

Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush with melted butter, if desired.