Preperation

You will need a bowl for mixing the ingredients, a dough cutter and a large cooking pot.

Take out the butter and microwave for a few seconds until softened.

Add add the room temperature water with the yeast, sugar and salt, then whisk ingredients until everything dissolves in the water.

Add the flower to the bowl of wet ingredients and mix until everything is well combined.

Kneading

The dough should be relatively dry meaning it will be easy to knead until we add the butter later on to prevent the mixture from becoming to sticky at any point.

Take your dough out of the bowl and start kneading it for a few minutes until the dough starts to gain some strength and will stretch, rather than tear.

Stretch out the dough, add the butter and fold it in before kneading again. The dough will initially get more sticky as the hydration increases and the butter will have to be incorporated into the dough. Trust the process, keep kneading and it will come together as it did before.

The total kneading time should be at around 7 minutes and you should be able to perform a window-pane test.

Bulk Fermentation (First Rise)

Place the dough ball in a container and let it rest for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the room temperature of the dough and the room. The dough should double in size.

Bulk Fermentation (Second Rise)

Dust the top of your dough and countertop with flour and place it on the counter-top smooth side down. Perform a couple of folds to degas the dough and rebuild some tension in the dough. Place the dough ball in a container and let it rest for 45 minutes to 1.5 hours depending on the room temperature of the dough and the room. The dough should double in size.

Preshaping

Take the individual dough ball flatten it slightly, smooth side down. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and shape them into cinders. You should end up with a dough ball that has tension again. Lightly flower the dough ball, cover it up and let it rest for 15-20 minutes

Final Shaping

Take a piece of dough and roll it out on over the table. Get it as thin and long as possible. Create a U-shape and twists the ends around each-other like a braid, before folding it back onto the main dough. Put the dough into the fridge and let it rest for 20 minutes.

Baking

The oven should be preheated on 200 degrees Celsius. Bring a pot of water to a boil and place the baking soda into the water. The water should fizzle.

Once the water is back to a boil again cook every pretzel for a total of 60 seconds and sprinkle them with salt.

Bake the pretzels for around 15 minutes.