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My girlfriend's brother in law Dennis and I made pretzels on the ranch kettle yesterday.  This was my first real cook on my ranch kettle.  I've only done two cold smokes since I got it. 

We looked through a bunch of recipes and settled in on this one:
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/161586/papa-drexlers-bavarian-pretzels/?internalSource=amp&referringContentType=amp%20recipe&clickId=amp_directions

We decided to double the recipe and the dough turned out good.  Dennis did see a few reviews that said the dough was a little bland so he added a little extra salt, about 1/4 teaspoon. 

While Dennis was prepping the dough I was firing up two chimneys of KBB.  Since this was my first cook on the ranch kettle I was guessing that a little over two chimneys would put the grill around 450.  Once the chimneys were about 3/4 lit I topped the chimneys off with a little more KBB.  Once the coals were fully lit I set up the grill with two direct zones and a large indirect zone in the middle.   I added a lit more KBB on both sides, added my pizza stones then shut the grill and let it go until the unlit KBB finished putting out dirty smoke. 

By this time Dennis had most of the pretzels rolled out and shaped.  The recipe we used really didn't have any resting period once the pretzels were done.   This is where we deviated from the recipe.  I made a lye solution with 1/2 cup of lye and 10 cups of water for dipping the pretzels.  The recipe called for boiling water with baking soda.

Now came the tricky part.  The pretzels stuck to the parchment paper we laid them out on.  We were able to get most of them off to dip in the lye then back onto parchment and onto the grill. A few of them especially in the last batch wouldn't come off of the parchment so we just dipped them into the lye still stuck on the paper. 

Grill time.  By pure luck the grill settled in right at 450.  We did a solo pretzel first to make sure we were on the right track. This one was dipped and cooked before we did anything with the other 11 pretzels.  It turned out great.  The recipe said to bake for 8 minutes at 450 but since we used lye instead of a boiling water and baking soda mixture it took more like 12-15 minutes.

The first large batch came out great.  The last batch rose quite a bit by the time we were ready to dip and cook them so they ended up coming out as pretzel buns.  We rubbed them with a little butter when they came out to give them some extra flavor.

All in all it was a really fun challenge and we had some great success but need to make some tweaks to prevent the pretzels from sticking to the parchment.  They did come off of the parchment after cooking so it wasn't the end of the world and the bottom cooked just fine on the parchment. 

This morning I decided to put a little icing on the pretzel so to speak and make breakfast sandwiches on the pretzel buns.  Again, I decided to use a grill instead of cooking inside.  I fired up my vortex off to one side of the grill with a slightly less than full chimney of KBB.  Bacon was put into a foil pan, hit with fresh ground black pepper then onto the grill opposite the vortex and cooked until done.   I placed a chunk of hickory over the vortex for some flavor. I removed the bacon then put my cast iron skillet on the grill and poured some of the bacon grease in.  I fried two eggs per sandwich and topped the first round with shredded Mexican cheese.   The second round of eggs was topped with Mexican cheese then some shredded hot habanero cheddar I smoked two weeks ago.

The pretzel buns were sliced in half then lightly toasted over the vortex.  The pretzel buns got a little bit damp from putting them in a ziplock bag before they had totally cooled last night.  5-10 seconds per side over the vortex took care of that. 

The buns got a little mayo then eggs with melted cheese, bacon, and sliced avocado.  They were awesome!!!

Firing up to chimneys with my Looftlighter.
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Dual zone setup.  This was topped by a little more unlit KBB right after this pic.
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Some of the pretzels.  It looks like I missed a pic of a tray or two.  We had 12 pretzels total. 
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This is where I had the Smoke transmitter on both cheese smokes and it didn't occur to me that it was to close to the heat for a hot cook.  The heat ended up slightly warping the back of the unit.  Lesson learned. 
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First pretzel.  This was a test run to make sure it turned out ok so we didn't ruin a bunch of pretzels at once.
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Big top vent holes let use see what was going on in the grill!
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The test pretzel was a success.  We forgot to salt it before we put it on, so we did learn something from our test.
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First batch.  This one came out great and in pretzel shapes.
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Then the last batch. It had a lot of time to rise and turned out as pretzel buns.  We also had one that didn't brown. Dennis and I are 98% sure it was dipped in lye, but the color of it says otherwise.  This batch was really stuck to the parchment so we just dipped it in the lye on the parchment paper.
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BREAKFAST TIME!!!
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Dang Mike, you don't mess around. Nice one. Breakfast and pretzels looked great. My 26er is fired up and dough rising. I've never baked anything lol


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Quote from: HoosierKettle on February 12, 2017, 12:07:02 PM
Dang Mike, you don't mess around. Nice one. Breakfast and pretzels looked great. My 26er is fired up and dough rising. I've never baked anything lol


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Thanks!  Really the only dough based foods I do is pizzas and I've only been making dough for that for about a year.  Dennis is more familiar with dough, so having him do most of the dough part of the cook was probably a good thing.  It only took me about 30-40 pizzas to figure out how to make a fairly roundish pizza, so I am sure if I tried to form any of the pretzels they would have been a disaster.  You can kind of see in the raw pretzel pics where Dennis got it dialed in by making the pretzels a little smaller but thicker.

Good luck with yours!!!!

Hell yes, Mike! I really like your pretzels buns! What a fun experiment!
I'm going to try the lye next time to see if they will get that darker color. That breakfast sandwich looks killer bud!


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Quote from: Travis on February 12, 2017, 12:39:53 PM
Hell yes, Mike! I really like your pretzels buns! What a fun experiment!
I'm going to try the lye next time to see if they will get that darker color. That breakfast sandwich looks killer bud!


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Thanks!  You can see a bit of a color difference between the two pretzel cooks that were done in lye vs your baking soda cook.  It takes a little bit for the pretzels to get that deep dark color...it would be easy to pull them off when they are golden and not deep brown in color.

Wow! I now have a new goal to achieve with my kettles. Great post.


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That's so friggin awesome, @MikeRocksTheRed!!  Thanks for the pics and details. 


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You had me when I saw the avocados,  absolutely awesome,  now I wanna make some pretzels!!!!!

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WOW!   

@MikeRocksTheRed Did you hire a photographer to follow you around?..LOL  You guys did a great job!!  I didn't butter mine, will have to try that.  I was going to make more today on the ranch but decided to take advantage of the nice weather and got half of my acre mowed before the mower got stuck... someone said we have 10 days of rain or some crazy shit like that. Maybe tomorrow after work, I really wanna make some pretzel buns for some hamburgers.. Hope some of the other guys did this, It was fun.

oh yea, sorry about your Smoke, that sucks!

Quote from: varekai on February 12, 2017, 06:07:44 PM
oh yea, sorry about your Smoke, that sucks!

Didn't hire a photographer but would love too!  I miss so many good pics (i.e.: my ny strips I did Friday night).  I have learned from @RumBar to just get my phone as close as possible as opposed to using the zoom. 

It looks like I need a new kickstand and battery compartment cover for my smoke then it will be back to normal.  I'll have to do a test with some boiling water to make sure it's still working properly.  Considering it was so close to the kettle and right where I had coals banked I'm kind of impressed that it seemed to run fine the entire cook and didn't suffer more damage. 

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Ouch!

Oh shit. It just warped the back plate, right Mike? You should make a L bracket mounting plate to screw into one of the legs.


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Your supersized pretzels look like the ones I get at the A's games.  Nice job @MikeRocksTheRed.  This has been fun following you guys that accepted the challenge.  Your not the first nor will you be the last to melt a thermometer on a RK. Other thermometers did not fare as well (right @Troy).

Quote from: Travis on February 12, 2017, 07:00:56 PM
Oh shit. It just warped the back plate, right Mike? You should make a L bracket mounting plate to screw into one of the legs.


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Or just put it on the handle in the main frame that you would lift to roll the grill around.  I just didn't even think about the heat since I had put the Thermo in that spot to the left for two cold smokes.  It was a total lack of thought while I'll was stressing about guesstimating how much coal i needed to hit 450 in a grill I've never had over about 83 degrees!

I might call Thermosworks and let them know what I did.  I doubt they will cover anything under warranty but they might actually want the unit back to runs some test on to see what the heat did to the inner workings. 

You can see in this pic that the center of the frame handle would have been a much better spot for it.  This pic was from setting up for a cheese smoke.
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That's true, Mike. Looking at the pic, that center bar would have been a better set up, but like you said, I'd still contact them. They'd probably like to hear your feedback whether they replace it or not. As long as it still works though.


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Quote from: Cellar2ful on February 12, 2017, 07:06:55 PM

Your supersized pretzels look like the ones I get at the A's games.  Nice job @MikeRocksTheRed.  This has been fun following you guys that accepted the challenge.  Your not the first nor will you be the last to melt a thermometer on a RK. Other thermometers did not fare as well (right @Troy).

Hah, I actually found a piece of that mav 732 yesterday!

They look amazing Mike, well done!!! I'm so craving a breakfast pretzel now after seeing those pics. Love that you added avocado, I'm so going this next time Great detailed bake and post, you should be very pleased! I'm laughing because I used my iPhone torch and watched through the vent hole while I was baking mine too

Some tips for your next bake.....
Just did some bakers maths and your dough is 75% hydration. The dough I use is 47% hydration. Pretzel dough can't be sticky at all, if it's not the right hydration you have no hope of shaping them because they  are sticky. Guessing that's why you had the problem with the baking paper. You also can't add flour to your bench otherwise they won't roll. The dough has to be spot on perfect straight from the bowl to be able to shape them. Generally 75% hydration is a good pizza dough. Try cutting back on the water.

Also your lye solution is approx.  4.2% I wouldn't recommend going above  3.5%, anywhere between 3%-3.5% is recommended.  If the lye is to strong you can burn your mouth when eating them.


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Wow Mike, that's awesome!
I'd try it for pretzel buns alone
I messed up a thermopop and thermoworks did right by me...just saying they're a great company


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Now I gota try this pretzel thing.  Great cook and pics!  Looks like the dough recipe is close to a pizza dough recipe.

Quote from: Davescprktl on February 15, 2017, 08:48:14 AM
Now I gota try this pretzel thing.  Great cook and pics!  Looks like the dough recipe is close to a pizza dough recipe.

It's not far off from pizza dough.  The recipe I went with had a lot of yeast which is why it didn't need any significant rising periods.  It did come out very sticky and was tricky to deal with.  I think as @5onia mentioned the dough shouldn't be that sticky so I'd probably change up my recipe on my next batch of pretzels.  The taste was awesome though!  I'd also consider brushing the edge of further pizza cooks with a lye solution to see if it ends up with a pretzel crust!

OMG Mike please do it!!! A pretzel crust pizza would be amazing, you are a genius! Please let me know how it goes


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Awesome cook!


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Wow! That looks amazing!  So, who won the pretzel challenge?

We all did!!!!!

Quote from: greenweb on February 17, 2017, 07:55:11 AM
Wow! That looks amazing!  So, who won the pretzel challenge?

We'll have to wait for the russians to finish the hack....  LOL!!!   

Yes @MikeRocksTheRed , WE all did, especially those of us that got to EAT the results!!!