German Soft Sourdough Pretzels

Directions

• Levain (9:00 p.m.)
• Mix the Levain ingredients in a small bowl or jar. Cover the jar and keep it warm for 12 hours.
• Mix (9:00 a.m. the next day; or even as late as 4 p.m. with the overnight option)
• Add the flour, cold water, salt, diastatic malt powder, and levain to the bowl of a strong stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix on speed 1 for 2 to 3 minutes until ingredients become incorporated, while gradually adding the softened butter after 2 minutes. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes. Hand-mix or mix in a stand mixer on speed 2 to 3 for 4-6 additional minutes, until the dough becomes smooth and cohesive. It will be a stiff dough.
• Mixing or kneading the dough will inevitably raise its temperature. The water's temperature is the best means to control the eventual temperature and fermentation activity of the dough. On hot days, use ice water; on colder days, use warmer water. The dough's temperature should not exceed 78℉ to prevent too quick fermentation.
• Bulk fermentation (9:15 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., about 3.5 hours at <78°F)
• Place the dough into a very lightly oiled and covered container for bulk fermentation.
• After an hour of bulk fermentation, give the dough one set of stretches and folds. Make sure that the dough stays above 72°F, and under 78°F to prevent overfermentation. Return the dough to the bulk container and let it rest until it is time to divide.
• Divide and preshape (12:45 p.m.)
• Because the dough is low hydration, keep it covered at all times while resting. Divide the dough into twelve 118-gram pieces. Preshape pieces into balls, cover them with a wet kitchen towel or plastic sheet, and let rest for a couple of minutes on the work surface. Then fold and press each into itself and roll them into tapered logs of about 6 inches.
  
  Again, cover dough logs with a wet kitchen towel or plastic sheet to prevent them from drying out. Let the logs rest for 15 minutes until they are extensible enough to be further rolled out to tapered finger-thickness of about 24 inches or more.
• Shape (1:00 p.m.)
• Line two half-sheet pans with thin silicone mats or quality parchment paper.
  
  Starting with the dough log preshaped first, place the log before you so the tips are at your sides. Begin with your hands slightly overlapping in the middle, press down, and roll the dough back and forth away from and then toward your body. As you roll, move your hands outward to encourage the log to spread out and become increasingly thin as you move from the center out to the tips. Roll the dough logs out to finger-thin, yet tapered ropes of 24 or more inches. Leave bulbs on the ends of the rope.
  
  If the dough is not rested enough, the pretzel-shaped dough will eventually contract. This leads to clumped-up, bagel-lookalike pretzels.
  
  You want to keep a bulge in the very center of this rope, this will be the part you later score. Grab the two tips and arrange the dough rope so it loops away from you. Take one tip and fold it over the other side. Switch your hands so your right hand is holding the new right tip and your left is holding the new left tip. Fold the same side over the other as previously. Grab the two tips, fold them up over the knot in the middle, and place each tip on its corresponding side inside the loop. It looks nice to have a little overlap with each tip — gently press it down into the side to seal.
• Proof (1:15 p.m. to 1:45 p.m.)
• Let the shaped dough proof on the work surface at room temperature for 30 minutes, again covered. It will take a bit of trial and error to get the proofing time right.
  
  OVERNIGHT OPTION: at this point, you could also retard the shaped pretzels in the fridge overnight to make them the next day. This overnight fermentation stage helps with making these sourdough pretzels even more digestible.
  
  Instead of leaving them out for 30 minutes covered to proof, leave them for only 15 minutes covered withplastic sheets, and then place them onto baking sheet pans and into the fridge. The next day, remove the plastic sheets and let the dough continue to chill uncovered in the fridge for 20 minutes to develop dry skin. The skin will prevent the lye from permeating the dough. Then, continue with the rest of the process.
  
  Otherwise, uncover and transfer the baking sheet pans holding your pretzels to the fridge for 45 minutes to 1 hour to develop the important dry skin (which also helps them keep their shape).
• Lye bath (2:45 p.m.)
• Make sure you have two racks in your oven, one at the bottom third and one in the top third. Preheat your oven to 450°F (230°C) convection or 475°F (245°C) without convection.
  
  While wearing long latex or rubber gloves, add 1000g of room-temperature water (not very cold or very not) to a stainless steel bowl. Add 40g (4% of water) of food-grade lye (never the other way around) to the water while quickly mixing the solution with a stainless steel whisk to prevent the powder from clumping. The mixture will initially be cloudy, keep stirring until all the powder is dissolved.
  
  With rubber gloves, pick up one pretzel-shaped pretzel, transfer it to the lye bath, and let it bathe for 4 to 6 seconds. Take the pretzel from the lye bath and hold it up for a second or two to let bath fluids drop off into the lye bath. Alternately, place the pretzel on a small, intermediate cooling rack for a few seconds before transferring it back to the lined baking sheet pan.
  
  Instead of silicone mats, quality parchment paper can be used to line the baking sheet pans. However, thin or cheaper parchment paper may not prevent the pretzels from sticking to the paper.
  
  The remaining wetness from the lye bath on the outside of the pretzel is necessary as it will need to do its work (see below) before harmlessly dissipating in the oven's heat.
  
  Repeat with remaining dough pieces. Once all the pretzels have been processed, carefully flush the remaining lye solution in the kitchen sink or save it for future use.
• Bake (3:00 p.m.)
• Sprinkle coarse salt over the bulge of each pretzel and then score the bulge with a razor blade. Place baking sheet pans with the pretzels onto preheated oven racks.
  
  Bake at 450°F (230°C) for 10 minutes. Rotate the pans back to front and top to bottom, turn the oven down to 425°C (220°C), and bake for 6 minutes longer or until a reddish-brown chestnut color has developed.
  
  Transfer pretzels from the oven to a cooling rack. Spray a little water mist on top of the pretzels to create a shine and seal. Enjoy them while they are still warm.
• Store
• Store pretzels in an airtight freezer bag, or even in a vacuum-sealed bag for later consumption.