Though the recipe was straight forward it had a few steps that confused me. Wash the raw dough in warm baking soda water? Really? For how long?
I needed instant yeast for the recipe but in the midst of the stay-at-home mandate during the Covid-15 pandemic I have done what everyone else has done... clean, organize and tidy up. My pantry is organized, my baking supplies in categories and my spices alphabetized. That sounds great, but where IS that yeast? No worries I thought, I would just do a run over to PJs Market and get some more. Gloved and masked I popped in for the quick purchase but they were out! It seems everyone is making yummy foods in need of yeast. It was days before I went shopping again and they had no instant yeast, but that only meant the resting time would be longer.
I am what I call a refrigerator cook and not a baker. Most things I make are made up, put together with the foods I have on hand and no recipe. Baking is another story, it does not come naturally to me so I need to follow a recipe. Often though, a recipe is over the top technical or unnecessarily complicated. This recipe is such. If you look on the web for pretzel bites you can find time consuming recipes that take 3 or 4 times as long, treating/handling each 'bite' individually. Not in my kitchen!
So here is my recipe with a few alternatives to simplify. The recipe makes about 6 dozen bites. With the pandemic I could not give any away so I made half a recipe which worked just fine.
PRETZEL BITES
Dough
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
2 1/4 tsp instant yeast (or regular, but add an hour or more for the resting process)
7/8 to 1 cup warm water
Topping
1 cup boiling water
2 TBL baking soda
coarse salt
6 TBL unsalted melted butter
Instructions
1. I made the dough by hand (though you can use a mixer) Place all of the dough ingredients into a bowl, and begin with a fork to mix. Then just dig in with your hands and mix until well-combined. Bring to a floured surface and knead the dough for about 5 minutes until it's soft, smooth, and slack. Spray a bowl with oil and place the dough in the bowl. Cover with seran wrap and allow it to rest for 30 minutes for instant or an hour or two for regular yeast.
2. While the dough is resting, prepare the topping. Combine the boiling water and baking soda, stirring until the soda is totally dissolved. Set the mixture aside to cool to lukewarm (or cooler).
3. Preheat your oven to 400°F. Prepare a baking sheet by lining it with parchment paper and spraying it with vegetable oil spray.
4. Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface, and divide it into six equal pieces.
5. Roll the six pieces of dough into 12" to 15" ropes. Cut each rope crosswise into about 12 pieces of about 1".
7. Transfer them to a greased parchment-lined baking sheet, and top with pretzel salt or sea salt by taking a pinch in your fingers and coating the top of each bite.
8. Bake each bite 10-14 minuets, 11 minutes worked for me.
9. Another strange part for me was buttering them. Most recipes call for doing this individually. NOT! I just melted the butter in a small skillet and when I took the bites from the oven, dumped them in the skillet, rolled them around and then put them on a rack to cool.
I honestly could have sat down and eaten the whole batch (remember I made a half batch so only partially greedy) after giving Russ his token 4 bites. They are seriously delicious...salty and bit sized.
ENJOY!