How do you eat a sandwich on a pretzel? Pretzel rolls, of course!

I’m constantly searching for new and interesting breads that I can use to make sandwiches for lunch during the week. Most of the time I just pour through King Arthur Flour’s website for recipe ideas, but I got this one while photograzing over on Serious Eats. I love pretzel bread, so I had to give it a try, and boy did they turn out well. I decided to use Alton Brown’s recipe for soft pretzels, but formed into small loaves instead of pretzel shapes. Fortunately, making pretzel bread is really that simple, and with fun differences from your standard bread recipes.

The recipe starts out like any other, with wet and dry ingredients being mixed together. The original recipe calls for proofing your active dry yeast; since I use instant yeast, I just combined everything at once.

I managed to get the dough to come together completely just with the dough whisk, after which I busted out the electric hand mixer and the dough hooks for kneading.

The dough was neither too dry nor too slack; it was fairly sticky, but didn’t weld itself to your hand when you picked it up. The dough only rises once, until doubled in size.

The dough is divided up into 8 equal pieces. If the dough is too sticky you can use some oil to manipulate it more easily, but I didn’t really have any trouble.

Pretty good shaping! This dough didn’t seem to deflate as much after it’s first rise and was pretty robust, which I think contributed to my ease in shaping it.

The fun part! Pretzels get their trademark brown, glossy sheen from taking a hot bath in baking soda and water. Thirty seconds in a pan of boiling water and baking soda, and they were ready for baking.

You can see the difference between the one loaf on the right side that hasn’t taken it’s bath and those that have. Make sure you flip the loaf top side down in the water, otherwise your nicely shaped top becomes your bottom (this happened to the first one I did, seen here in the bottom left corner). They also got an egg yolk and water coating after they were boiled.

This time I slashed! Pretzel loaves just have to be slashed so that you can see the white insides peeking out from underneath that shiny, brown top. The loaves grew a substantial amount in the oven, so much so that at least two of the rolls were too large for as single sandwich. I could have definitely gotten a couple more loaves out of the recipe if I had made several of them a bit smaller. The loaves themselves were awesome; they tasted just like pretzel bread, and were fantastic for sandwiches. I decided to forgo the salt this time, since a lot of pretzel breads seem to not include it, but I think a light sprinkling of kosher salt would be a good addition to these rolls. They’ve inspired me to make actual soft pretzels, too; it was so easy and fun, with such fantastic results. Gotta love recipes like that!

Soft Pretzel Rolls (adapted from Alton Brown)

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) instant yeast
• 22 ounces all-purpose flour, approximately 4 1/2 cups
• 2 ounces unsalted butter, melted
• 10 cups water
• 2/3 cup baking soda
• 1 large egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
• Pretzel salt (optional)

Directions

1. Combine the water, sugar, salt, yeast, flour and butter in a large bowl and mix until well incorporated.
2. Knead with an electric mixer or by hand until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, approximately 4 to 5 minutes (by mixer).
3. Transfer the dough to an oiled dough rising bucket or bowl, cover and let rise for 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.
4. Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside.
5. Bring the 10 cups of water and the baking soda to a rolling boil in a large stock pot.
6. In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 equal pieces. Form each piece into a small, oval loaf. Place onto the parchment-lined sheet pan.
7. Place the loaves into the boiling water, topside down, one at a time, for 30 seconds. Remove them from the water using a large flat spatula. Return them, right side up, to the sheet pan.
8. Brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and water mixture and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Slash with a sharp bread knife once or twice. Bake until dark golden brown in color, approximately 14 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 minutes before serving.