These pillowy soft pretzel bites can be made within 2 hours with standard bread ingredients. Once you realize how easy it is to make these pretzel bites at home, you’ll be turning the pretzel dough into pretzel hot dog buns or stuffed pretzels.
After making a batch of these pretzel bites, either as an after-school snack or for a party snack, you will need a sweet or savory dipping sauce. I like to serve these with either a Tomato Bacon jam or a traditional Queso Mexican Cheese.
How to Make Pretzel Bites
Making pretzel bites is actually much easier than you might imagine. It’s just active yeast, flour, water, oil, sugar and salt as well as a bit of your time.
Is My Yeast Active?
The first step is making sure that your yeast is alive and will “eat” your sugar. The first step is to check the expiration date on your yeast. If it’s past its prime, toss it. If it’s been stored in a cool dry place and it’s before the expiration, you should be ready to start baking!
Mix together your warm water, salt and sugar until the sugar and salt has dissolved. Then mix in your yeast and give it a good stir to dissolve.
Let the yeast rest for 5 minutes to activate. It should begin to bubble and bloom. If your yeast does not look bubble, it is dead and you will need to start over. If your yeast packet is not active, you will not get any kind of rise in your pretzel bites, and they will be inedible.
Making the Pretzel Dough
After the yeast is ready, add in the flour and mix well with a dough hook. Place the dough in a bowl and cover with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or with a warm damp towel and let rise for an hour.
During this time, you can make your Tomato Bacon jam or Queso Cheese dip.
Forming the Prezel Shapes
This article is all about making pretzel bites, which is the easiest and fastest pretzel shape to make. However, if you want to make traditional pretzels, this dough will work great for that. This dough also will work for stuffed pretzels or pretzel hotdog buns as well.
If you’re planning on only making a couple of pretzel bites (or don’t want a ton of pretzels around the house) you can also freeze the dough until you’re ready to use it.
Boiling and Baking the Pretzels
Something that differentiates pretzels from other breads is that they are boiled before they are baked.
After you have your pretzels in their desired shapes, put a large pot of water on the stove to boil and add about half a cup of baking soda.
Put the pretzels in the boiling water and boil on each side for 30 seconds. Transfer to a greased baking sheet and paint with egg wash and sprinkle each bite with coarse sea salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes. The bites will be golden brown and hot! Serve with mustard, cheese, or jams.
Reheating Pretzel Bites
You can freeze the baked pretzels or the pretzel dough. When you reheat frozen pretzel bites, you will have to heat the bites longer than regular dough.
- Reheating frozen dough: Let the dough come to room temperature. You can defrost it in the microwave or you can soak the dough (in an airtight container!) in a hot water bath until it’s pliable.
- Reheating frozen pretzel bites: You can either reheat in the oven or in the microwave. Brush the pretzels with water and place them in the oven at 350 F. for 15 minutes.
What to Serve with Pretzel Bites
There are many different options when it comes to deciding what to serve with your pretzels.
- Beer Cheese or Queso
- Tomato Bacon Jam
- Plum Jam
- Spicy Mustard or plain yellow mustard
Pretzel Bites
Course: Uncategorized12
servings1
hour10
minutes12
minutes75
kcalIngredients
1.5 cups 1.5 warm water
1 packet 1 active dry yeast
1 tsp 1 salt
1 tbsn 1 brown sugar
3 tbsp 3 neutral cooking oil, divided
3.5 cups 3.5 all-purpose flour
1/4 cup 1/4 baking soda
1 1 egg
coarse sea salt
Directions
- Mix the water, salt and sugar together, then add the yeast. Give it a good stir with a spoon and then let the mixture rest for about 5 minutes. The yeast mixture should begin to foam.
- Add the flour and two tablespoons of the oil. Mix until combined and the dough comes together. I recommend using a dough hook attachment on your mixer for this step.
- Place the dough in a bowl and cover with the rest of the oil. Use plastic wrap or a damp towel to cover the bowl and place it in a warm area. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
- Pull the dough into small pieces, and roll into a ball. The pieces should be about the size of golf balls, but you can make them smaller or larger if you’d like. Just remember that they will grow when they are placed into the boiling water.
- Put a large pot of water on the stove and boil. Add the baking soda to the water. Boil each pretzel for about 30 seconds on each side.
- Once boiled, transfer the pretzels to a baking sheet and brush with the egg wash. Sprinkle with salt. Bake for 12 minutes. They will be golden brown and fluffy inside when they are done. Let pretzels cool slightly and then serve!
