Baking: Bretzels | Cuciniamo: Bretzel

Today we're going to make Bretzels. These savory breads are maily made with brewer's yeast, flour, water, salt, sugar and butter. This is why they're not an expensive product at all; meanwhile they're slow to do. You will need a whole morning or afternoon because of the leavening time. The ingredients are:

☆For the yeast part☆

✔100 g of flour 00

✔4 g of brewer's yeast

✔55 ml of lukewarm water

✔12 g of sugar

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Procedure

Put water and yeast in a bowl and mix it with sugar. The result should be like this:

 

Add stifted flour a little at time and mix, then knead the dough for a bit. This operation with the yeast wll take you about 5 minutes. This is how the dough should look like:

 Now, put it in the oven heated at the minimum, like 50°C for an hour.

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Before taking out the yeast dough from the oven, make the main dough with these ingredients:

✔400 g of flour 00

✔50 g of butter

✔225 ml of lukewarm water

✔12 g of salt

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Procedure

Stift flour in a bowl. Melt the salt in the hot water (not too hot!). Make a whole in the middle and start mixing from the centre once you've added water (with salt) a little at time.

 Add the yeast dough to the flour, it should look like this:

 Add room-temperatured butter made in pieces to the dough: now, then knead it all together. This will take you 10-15 minutes.

The dough is done, BUT it has to rise in the heated oven (about 50°C) for other 2 hours.
One it has doubled its size put the dough on you working table - previously covered in flour - and make from 8 to 12 cylinder-shaped pieces: the inner part must be thicker of the extremities. Once done these, shape the pieces in the typical brezel shape:

Now you need a soup pot: fill it with water and heat it. When it's boiling put 1 spoon of sodium bicarbonate/baking soda carefully in the pot. Now, put one bretzel per time in it and leave it pre-cooking for 30 seconds. This will solidify it and make the typical compactness of these breads.
Once you take them out of the pot put some thick salt on their wet surface. Put them on a baking tray and cook in the oven at 180°C for about 20 minutes, until they're golden.