Honey Whole Wheat Pretzels

I had a craving for whole wheat pretzels. Soft home made style pretzels. Jennifer is usually the pretzel maker in the house, but she makes a standard AP flour pretzel. (And they are good.)

Since the Super Bowl was this Sunday, I figured it would be a good opportunity to attempt some whole wheat pretzels. I searched the Internet for recipes and wasn't too pleased. Most recipes had a combo of cake flour and whole wheat. Some had weird ingredients (like added wheat gluten.) I thought I settled on one until I realized they wanted you to make the dough in a bread machine!?! I searched again. Then I found this recipe. This would be my starting point for home made whole wheat pretzels.

First, there was no way I was going to use Splenda as a sweetener. I immediately changed that to honey. Second, I doubled the recipe as it didn't seem this recipe would make enough. Third, I made the recipe with only whole wheat flour and no cake or AP flour. And finally, I substituted the baking soda/water dredge with a true boil, like a real pretzel.

One issue I had when combining the ingredients was that our honey was a bit old and crystallized. I'm not sure if this was the reason, but I had to add a fair amount of water to the dough to get it to stick together. I probably added a little too much as it became quite sticky. I let it rise in the oven for an hour without modifying it any further. Assembly went well enough as I created very home made looking pretzels. And soon I was boiling the pretzels. I used The Joy of Cooking as a guide to the boiling. Although the four cups of water was fairly low in the pot I used, and it was hard to tell when the pretzels started to float. So I may not have boiled them as long as I would have liked. Also, the water level was even lower when I made the second batch, which didn't make things easy.

Due to the all whole wheat nature of the pretzels, I also felt it was hard to tell when they were "brown" and done baking. I pretty much took them out at the end of the eight minutes, but they may have been able to go longer. I tasted one right out of the oven and thought it was delicious. I do feel they need a good sweet mustard, which we didn't have in the house. I used a little course ground mustard and that wasn't exactly right for it.

They were gobbled up at the super bowl party so I guess others liked them. Not really sure as I didn't do any polling. Unfortunately they got a little soggy overnight and were not nearly as good as when the first one came out of the oven the previous day. Jennifer's comment is that she thought nothing should be made entirely out of whole wheat flour. Oh well.