Whole Spelt Soft Pretzels

I'm not usually one for buying soft pretzels at the mall, but every now and again I do enjoy the salty, dough-y, buttery taste of a nice big pretzel.  With mustard.  Obviously.

I like using whole grains as often as possible when I bake, and these pretzels were no exception.  The original recipe from this delightful site called Heavenly Homemakers called for whole wheat flour, but I used whole spelt flour.  Spelt is high in B vitamins and minerals, and although it is not gluten-free, it is thought that the gluten in spelt may be better digested because it breaks down easier than the gluten in wheat.  Of course, you can always try whole wheat flour as well, or experiment with another gluten-free flour if you want to get fancy!

I also cut the recipe in half because I didn't need 18 of these suckers.  The halved recipe was definitely plenty.  I will defer to many of the photos on the Heavenly Homemakers site because I was home alone prepping these pretzels and couldn't take a picture of myself (especially with messy hands).  Additionally, as usual, I changed the types of ingredients slightly to accommodate some of my nutritional preferences.

Ingredients:

1 cup water
2 Tablespoon yeast
2 teaspoon honey
2 1/2 cups organic milk
1 stick pasture butter (or at least organic)
1/2 cup honey
4 teaspoon salt
8 cups whole spelt (or wheat) flour
pasture butter for topping
coarse sea salt

Instructions:

Here are your players:

In a large bowl, mix 1 cup very warm water, 2 T. yeast and 2 t. honey.  

Stir this together and kind of mush the yeast around.  Let this sit for a few minutes while you do the next step.

Melt a stick of butter in a large saucepan.  Add 1/2 cup honey, 4 t. salt and 2 1/2 cups of milk.  Heat this to 120 degrees. I went a bit overboard on the temperature, but it still worked out fine.

Pour milk mixture into yeast mixture and stir.  

Stir in 8 cups of flour, 2 cups at a time.  Add more if it seems too "wet."  

Knead the dough for 5-10 minutes.  

Plop it into a bowl, cover it and let it rise for 1-1 1/2 hours.  Mine doesn't look all that different in this photo, but I could definitely tell it had risen.  

Pull it out of the bowl and knead it a few times to get the air out.  Pull a ball of dough, about the size of your fist off and get ready to make your very first pretzel! (such a proud moment).  Roll it into a long snake.  Cross the two ends about 2 inches from the tips, then twist the ends again - this is where you check the pictures on the original recipe post!  Then pick up the ends and pull them down to the bottom. And then, it should look like this.  And if it doesn’t, just undo it and try again. 

After you shape each pretzel, put them on a cookie sheet about an inch apart.  

(Mine are a bit shinier because butter was applied to the dough accidentally...although I wasn't complaining about how it made them taste!)

Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

 

Melt a stick of butter in a saucepan.  Right when you take the pretzels out of the oven, slather them with butter.  (I accidentally did this before I baked them, so I used just a bit afterwards.)  Sprinkle them with salt and enjoy hot!  They also freeze well in an air-tight freezer bag.

You can also vary this recipe by sprinkling them with cinnamon and sugar instead of salt.  I'm sure they'd also be great dunked in some melted cheese or topped with roasted garlic and olive oil.  The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!

*M*