Making Your Own Raised Pretzels

Looking for a fun activity to do with a group of people…kids, teens or adults? Making raised pretzels is pretty simple and you end up with a snack to share! Here’s one of my favorite recipes to make that is sure to get everyone involved!

This is a simple yeast bread recipe…great for new bakers to start with. It is a small batch recipe and can be mixed up by hand. My directions are pretty detailed because this recipe will be used by a few young people in the family that are new to baking yeast bread.

Most of the ingredients are pretty standard to have around, except maybe the Pretzel salt. I recently ordered some from Amazon just to have on hand.

Collect the rest of the ingredients as shown below:

Making the Raised Pretzel Dough

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 400 Degrees F. Spray baking sheets with oil (or use parchment paper or a silicon mat).

Step 2: In a medium bowl, measure out 2 Tablespoons of yeast (or 2 packages). Add 1/2 cup of very warm water and stir. Let it stand until dissolved and foamy (about 10 minutes).

Step 3: Add the milk, sugar, salt and gradually add 3 cups of flour, mixing after every 1/2 cup.

When the dough is too stiff to mix with a spoon, it will still be pretty sticky. Scrape it away from the sides and dump the whole pile out onto the floured surface. You will use about another cup of flour to knead the dough.

Step 4: Knead the dough. Make sure the pile of dough is sitting on about 1/2 cup of flour. The flour will be incorporated into the dough as you work with it. You can add more flour under the dough as needed to keep it from sticking to the table.

Carefully lift and pull the outer edges toward the center of the pile using the flat of your floured hand. Don’t poke into the dough…it will be too sticky.

Continue to pull and press the edges of the dough into the middle of the pile, pressing down with the heel of your hand. You will be working your way around the edge. Soon the dough will look smoother, although it will still feel sticky if you poke your finger into the dough. Knead the dough like this for about 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes of kneading, tuck all the edges into the center and turn the ball of dough smooth side up. Let it rest on the table a few minutes.

Step 5: Shape the dough. For this batch, I just made pretzel sticks. You could call them bread sticks. After cutting off chunks of dough, I gently stretched each piece, rolling them to make a long stick that fit on my baking sheet. After I made about a dozen sticks, I made a small round loaf of what was left of the dough.