Bread Flour vs. All-Purpose Flour: Which Is Best for Pretzels? - Uncle Henry's Pretzel Bakery (2024)

FAQs

Bread Flour vs. All-Purpose Flour: Which Is Best for Pretzels? - Uncle Henry's Pretzel Bakery? ›

Bread flour provides more structure

Homemade Soft Pretzels can be made with all purpose flour (plain flour) or bread flour. The difference is that if you use all purpose flour you will find that the inside of your pretzels will have a softer more fluffy texture, like a dinner roll.

The answer lies in a brief dip in an alkaline water bath before baking. This bath essentially gelatinizes the outside of the pretzel, preventing it from fully “springing” during baking (as bread does) and giving pretzels their signature chewy crust. It also gives them their unique and indelible “pretzel” flavor.

They're Boiled, Not Baked.

The dough is first shaped into a long rope and then boiled in water before being baked at a higher temperature than bread. This process creates a distinctive pretzel shape and gives them their unique taste.

Active dry yeast – You can use instant yeast instead, but note that your pretzels may just be slightly more fluffy than chewy.

Bread flour produces baked goods with more structure and chew than all-purpose flour, as all-purpose only has a protein content of 10 to 12 percent, versus the 12 to 14 percent of bread. All-purpose flour produces tender baked goods (as opposed to chewy ones) and is ideal for cakes, muffins, biscuits, piecrust, etc.

Because it's a “strong” flour, it's excellent for chewy bagels, artisan-style sourdough bread and anything else that needs structure and height. It also adds a delightful chewy texture to the finished product. Bread flour is also a “thirsty” flour, which means it absorbs more water than low protein flour.

If your pretzels have any sort of a metallic, bitter taste, it all comes down to the baking soda bath.

Under or over-proofing the dough

Specifically, under-proofed dough creates dense pretzels, while over-proofed dough can cause them to expand and then collapse. If your recipe requires fermenting (or proofing), one of the biggest mistakes you can make is letting your dough ferment for the wrong amount of time.

Lye. The dough is simple; take a basic yeast-risen dough that can be readied in an afternoon. But the trick to great pretzels is dipping the pretzels in a liquid wash before baking — and not just any wash, but a combination of water and lye. That's what gives pretzels their terrific color, texture and flavor.

What to do if your pretzel dough is too dry? ›

Homemade Soft Pretzel Recipe Tips

If it's super dry and not coming together in the stand mixer, add water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until it does. Conversely, if it's wet and sticky, add 1 tablespoon of flour at a time until it forms a cohesive, pliable dough.

How is a pretzel different from bread? A lot of people wonder how a soft pretzel is different from bread! The answer is that the dough is boiled before it is baked! Boiling the dough in the baking soda & water bath is the step in this recipe that gives this Homemade Pretzel Bread it's pretzel-y identity!

Dough for Soft Pretzel Bites

You need just 6 basic ingredients to get started including warm water, yeast, a little sugar to feed the yeast, melted butter, salt, and all-purpose flour. (If you have it, the same amount of bread flour works too!). You can use either instant (quick rise) or active dry yeast in this dough.

Bread flour has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour. More protein means more chew because and increase in protein directly correlates to an increase in gluten development (aka chew).

Use high-protein flour when you want to ensure your dough is elastic and that your finished baked goods will hold their shape. High protein flour is best for baking these tasty creations: Crusty, chewy bread.

Of the refined wheat flours, bread flour—milled from hard red spring, hard red winter, or a blend of both hard wheats—has the highest protein content, ranging from 12-14%. Its high protein content contributes to strong gluten potential.