Pretzel Roll/Bun Success
Well I finally overcame my fear of poaching dough and decided to give pretzel hamburger buns a chance. I used Alton Brown's recipe for Soft Pretzels since it seemed to contain most of the elements needed for a good hamburger bun. Strong yet slightly giving and able to hold up to the torrent of juice from the patty. (My patties are 65/35 home ground beef, insanely fatty and delicious!) It is a bit unnerving moving the buns to the baking soda water, so I decided to just sacrifice the parchment and cut it out below each bun so that I didn't deflate them. I was surprised that the outside of the poached dough was so leathery and thought I had ruined them, but after baking the skin got super tight and held onto the salt great. I didn't have pretzel salt, but I did have Celtic light grey sea salt that was pretty course, and it stuck great with the egg wash and since it is a VERY moist salt. Crunches in the mouth well too without being overly salty. Any tips on making pretzel rolls that you have found would be amazing since I plan on making these alot more in the future!
BTW, can you pretzel any dough? I thought about poaching my regular brioche burger buns but didn't know if that would turn out acceptable. Thanks again! -Cory