The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Pretzel production

beccad18's picture
beccad18

Pretzel production

I do soft pretzels in my bakery, and while they aren't the star of the show given all the sweet treats to choose from, I enjoy doing them and people have been enjoying them.  I only do a few a day right now (I only just opened), and I've gotten pretty quick at making them already, but I would LOVE to be able to make a few day's worth at a time but for the life of me I can't seem to manage making them ahead of time.  So far the quickest for me is to make the dough at night before I leave and let it batch proof in the fridge and then forming the cold dough is so easy, and the recipe only makes 7 pretzels, so I can bang that out fairly quickly now.

I've tried experimenting with fridging or freezing them after shaping but trying to thaw and proof leaves them all mushy and melted and often overproofed.

Any tips or suggestions for making them ahead of time would be most welcome!  Thank you!

 

MichaelLily's picture
MichaelLily

You could probably get away with freezing the dough.

However, I would not recommend doing pretzels in advance. They are meant to be a straight dough with short proofing times. That, and that they are so thin, are the reasons they are known to stale so quickly. I freeze mine and deliver them to restaurants for them to reheat and serve. I make between 30 and 100 large pretzels per day. It's just the nature of the beast. I also bake mine straight from the fridge and allow no time for proofing.

beccad18's picture
beccad18

I make mine a little beafy- I do a twist and doing a bit of a proof to get the chill off makes it's very nice and soft.  I was starting to think it just wasn't a dough that wants to be frozen.

What do you think about par baking and finishing them off each morning?  I bake them for about 9 minutes at 475* but could maybe pull them at 6 mins for a par bake.

 

MichaelLily's picture
MichaelLily

I don't think you can par bake it with the lye solution. I think color or texture or both would suffer.