Matthew Woolen is a master pastry chef and has worked in a variety of Seattle restaurants, including gastropub Old Sage, Zhu Dang, and a gluten-free restaurant called Capitol Cider.

Matthew Woolen

Pretzels have the edge over every other baked good because of their deeply browned surface, the direct result of treating the outside of the bread with an alkaline solution before sticking it in the oven. The heat and the alkaline solution encourage a ton of <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/mastering-the-maillard-reaction">Maillard browning</a>, which packs the big, soft twists of dough with all the toasty, roasty flavors we all know and love.Despite their nearly universal appeal and their big toasty flavors, pretzels aren’t often made at home. They’re a little tricky to make, sure, but it’s not just the fact that they have a unique shape or that they’re a yeast-raised bread and require a basic familiarity with proofing and dough handling. It’s because the best pretzels aren’t just dipped in any old alkaline solution—they’re dipped in a lye solution, and lye is a caustic, dangerous substance that needs to be used with the utmost care. Our <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/guides-tools/lye-safety-guide">guide to working with lye</a> will help alleviate a lot of anxiety on that front, and if you’re leery about it, you can always use a concentrated solution of baking soda (inferior to lye, but it will produce good results). Our recipe makes using a lye bath a little easier since we use a two-step baking process. Instead of dipping soft, squishy dough into the bath, you’re dipping parbaked pretzels—it’s more convenient and gives you the same, burnished results.Once you’ve got your lye-safety squared away, however, pretzels are straightforward. For our version of pretzels, we decided to lean into malty flavors, so we packed the dough with malt syrup and dark malted beer (and some diastatic malt powder helps with the rise). And for better dough handling and flavor, we employ a poolish, or “liquid sponge,” which is a high-hydration preferment dough. Thanks to autolysis, the protease and amylase enzymes in the flour break down gluten and starches, respectively, helping with the dough’s extensibility and creating a ton of food for yeast.Serve them up with some mustard and you’ll be slinging pretzels and beer at home like you own a mini-craft brewery.

Triple-Malted Soft Pretzels