Simply Homemaking: Tiny Crisp Pretzels

One of my favorite blogs is Penniless Parenting. She recently wondered if there is a way to make your own hard pretzels. I looked and looked online for pretzel recipes, and all I could find are for soft pretzels. So, I took up this monumental challenge. ;)

Here is what I did:

TINY CRISP PRETZELS

Ingredients ~

1/2 cup sourdough starter
Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 teaspoon natural sea salt (unrefined)
A bit of sprouted wheat flour to work the dough

Put the sourdough starter into a bowl. Stir in the Whole Wheat flour, a little at a time, until the dough is quite stiff. Cover the bowl and allow to ferment for at least 7 hours. I think mine actually sat for about 12 hours.

Using the sprouted wheat flour to dust your work surface, turn out the dough. Sprinkle the salt on top of it, and then knead it for 3 minutes, using the sprouted wheat flour if it gets sticky.

Preheat oven to 400 F. I put a Silpat on my baking sheet, but you could use parchment paper. Don't grease your pan. You want to avoid added fat that might make these not so crisp, unless you don't care about that.

Pinch off small pieces of dough and roll them between your hands to make little "snakes" and place them on the baking sheet. Sprinkle liberally with more natural sea salt.

Bake for about 13 minutes. Watch them. You don't want them to burn, but check one now and then to see if they are getting sufficiently crisp.

Cool on a dish towel and store in an airtight container.

I only baked about 1/4 of them last night and put the rest of the dough in the fridge and I'll bake those today.

These are really rather nice. I think you could step these up by the addition of garlic powder, herbs and spices. I might try that sometime when I have grandchildren here to help roll them.

Here is the dough right after I kneaded it:

At first I thought I would use my pasta maker instead of rolling them, but that did NOT work. At least, not with the attachments that I have.

Here they are on the baking sheet covered with the Silpat. You can see 2 of them that I tried in the traditional pretzel shape. That was definitely more trouble than I was willing to take.