Soft Chocolate Pretzels

More About This Recipe

• I have some pretty fun memories of my childhood that seem to mainly revolve around soft pretzels. Going to the mall? Get a soft pretzel. Baseball game? Soft pretzel. First trip to New York City? Soft pretzel, obviously. So when I started cooking seriously one of the first things I wanted to master was, you guessed it, the soft pretzel. There are two fun reasons why you should definitely make soft pretzels at home: 1) They’re the best when they are super-fresh. When you see them hanging under a heating lamp you can bet that they won’t be top-notch. 2) If you make them yourself, you can mix in other fun things. Like chocolate. And that’s how the chocolate soft pretzel was born. Pretzel dough is one of the easier doughs to make, actually. It’s very pliable and easy to work with. When it comes to the flour part of this recipe, it’s actually fairly important to weigh the flour. If you refuse to do so, it works out to about 4.5 cups, but don’t blame me if your pretzels come out dry. Weighing is always the way to go with doughs. Now, I was making these before I had a stand mixer, so you definitely don’t need one. If you don’t have one, just knead the dough vigorously in the bowl with one hand until it forms a soft ball. This amount of dough will make about eight pretzels so divide your dough up into eight smaller balls. If you want to be a perfectionist, you could weigh your smaller balls so they are all the same.
• If you were to bake these guys just like this without boiling first, they would be okay, but they wouldn’t have that super-soft interior and crunchy outside that makes a soft pretzel really delicious. To get that texture, we need to boil the pretzels in a baking soda mixture. So bring one gallon of water to a simmer in a large pot and stir in 1 cup of baking soda. NOTE: Be careful when stirring in your baking soda. It’ll foam a lot so add it slowly. If you just dump it in, you’ll have a big mess in your kitchen. Salt is very important to a pretzel. It’s so important, in fact, that they make a special salt just for pretzels called…pretzel salt. You need to get your hands on some of this if you’re going to make real pretzels. Of course, the best part about these pretzels is taking a bite when they are fresh out of the oven. Then the pretzel is warm and salty and the chocolate is still melted and delicious. Really good. I’m not a huge chocolate guy but this is the perfect amount of chocolate in something like this. It’s salty and sweet and one of the best snacks ever created!
• Ready to tie the pretzel knot with these pretzel recipes. Great for snacking and game day!