What Baking Soda Does

• Baking soda is usually added to baked goods when combining the wet and dry ingredients of a batter. Its alkaline properties combat the dough’s acidity and create loft by producing gas bubbles. When making soft pretzels, however, the baking soda isn’t added to the dough. Instead, up to 2/3 cup of baking soda is added to 10 cups of water and brought to a boil. Once the pretzels are dipped into this solution, the alkaline properties of the baking soda help to create what is known in baking as the Maillard reaction. This gives the pretzels their characteristic rich brown color without over-baking.

Setting the Dough

• The rising agent used in soft pretzel recipes is not baking soda, but yeast. It is the yeast that is responsible for creating the gas bubbles that leaven the dough, required for the pretzel dough’s first rise. Once the pretzels are shaped, however, no further rising is necessary. Boiling the shaped pretzels in water sets the dough by killing the yeast cells so the dough won’t continue to rise during the first part of the baking process. This allows for uniform pretzel shapes and even baking.

Skipping the Step

• It may be tempting to just shape your pretzels and pop them into the oven without boiling them in water treated with baking soda. Skipping this step will change the appearance, flavor and texture of your pretzels, however. Without the dunk in the boiling water, your dough will continue to rise once you pop the pretzels into the oven. Instead of dense, chewy pretzels, your dough will be lopsided, with light and airy bubbles and pockets created by the twisted shape of the pretzel dough. Without the addition of the baking soda, the pretzels will bake up pale with some browning due to crisping. To achieve an overall deep brown color, you would have to bake the pretzels so long, they would ultimately taste burnt and dry.

Baking and Storing

• The pretzels only need to sit in the baking soda bath for 35 to 40 seconds or so before baking. Remove them from the boiling water with a slotted spoon, and lay them flat on your prepared baking sheet. Brush each pretzel with an egg-yolk and water solution to help your salt adhere to the dough. Sprinkle with salt, put them in the oven and you’ll have soft pretzels ready in 12 to 14 minutes. They are best enjoyed fresh on the day you make them, but soft pretzels can store at room temperature, wrapped or in a container, for two days, or frozen for up to two weeks.