Pretzel and Pretzel Dogs Recipe
This recipe is pretty easy to follow (especially if you’ve made bread before), and it goes fantastic with an amazing lager or Oktoberfest beer. We chose to add a little spice to our pretzel dogs by using jalapeño cheddar hotdogs, and I would highly recommend you do the same.
This recipe is designed for six pretzel wrapped dogs or six pretzels.
Pretzel Recipe--Inspired by a recipe found on the Food Network
¾ cups warm water
½ TBSP Sugar
1 tsp. Salt
1 ¼ tsp. Active Dry Yeast
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (*or 2 cups flour, 1/4 cup spent grains: See note below)
2 TBSP melted butter
Vegetable oil or spray
10 cups water
⅔ cup baking soda
Coarse salt to sprinkle
Optional:
Egg wash
1 large egg yolk, beaten with 1 TBSP water
Process:
Mix the warm water, sugar, and yeast and let the mixture sit until the yeast starts to foam. Once the yeast is activated, mix it with flour, salt, and melted butter and knead using a mixer or by hand until the dough is smooth (3-5 minutes).
Spray or coat a bowl with vegetable oil, place the dough inside and cover with a cloth until the dough doubles in size (45-60 minutes).
Once the dough has risen, remove it from the bowl, knead it a couple times, and divide it into six even pieces. Take each divided piece and roll it across a flat surface until it is a little thicker than a pencil and about twice the length of your hotdogs.
Once rolled to desired length, take your hotdogs and spiral the dough around them leaving a half inch of hotdog exposed on each side. Pinch the ends of dough together so they don’t come unraveled during boiling or cooking.
Preheat oven to 450℉.
Now, with your dogs rolled in that delicious dough, set the ten cups of water and ⅔ cup of baking soda to boil. Once boiling, drop the dough rolled dogs in one at a time and boil them for thirty seconds a piece. Boiling them in alkaline water helps give the bread that pretzel flavor.
After the pretzel dogs have been boiled, spread the egg wash (optional) across the dough to give them a shiny finish, and sprinkle your desired amount of course salt across the top.
Place the pretzels in your preheated oven and cook them for 10-15 minutes or until dark brown.
*Using spent grains can add a fantastic nutty sweetness to your pretzels. If using the 2 cups all-purpose flour and 1/4 cup ground spent grains, increase the water in the recipe to 1 cup. The spent grains soak up a lot of water, so tweak it to get that smooth consistency in your dough.
This is a great (and fairly easy recipe) that pairs so nicely with any lager of your choosing. We ate ours with a lager we brewed ourselves. If you haven’t got a lager in your keg, check out some of our lager reviews and give one of those a try with your pretzel dogs.
Enjoy!
Mr. & Mrs. Brew