Make Easy Homemade Pretzels Using This Store-Bought Shortcut

If you consider yourself a culinary novice, making soft pretzels from scratch can be an overwhelming task. When you're in the mood for a chewy salt-covered snack and Costco's prepared pretzel rolls aren't always available (though they haven't been discontinued), mixing and kneading your own homemade dough doesn't exactly seem appealing. Luckily, you can use pre-made, refrigerated pizza dough to make perfectly chewy pretzels in no time. All you need to do is divide the dough into even portions, shape into pretzels, and prepare accordingly.

Believe it or not, when you compare recipes for homemade pizza dough versus chewy pretzels, many of the same ingredients are used. Both are made with a combination of all-purpose flour, water, fat like butter or olive oil, sugar, salt, and yeast. Therefore, transforming store-bought pizza dough into soft and chewy pretzels makes perfect sense.

To make these simplified snacks, start by kneading a bit of extra flour into pre-made pizza dough. Once the dough becomes less sticky, divide and shape. While pizza dough pretzels are fairly simple to make, you still want to drop your pretzels in an alkaline bath before baking. An alkaline bath is essential when making pretzels since it changes the pH of the dough and speeds up the browning process. Use a lye solution or a combination of hot water mixed with baking soda. As with any homemade recipe, once the pretzels are prepped and bathed, brush them with egg wash, add a sprinkling of coarse salt, and bake.

Since you're saving time using pizza dough to make these satisfying snacks, feel free to get creative with certain steps in the preparation process. When it comes to shaping, instead of forming traditional pretzels, turn long strips of pizza dough into pretzel rounds that look like bagels. Alternatively, cut the dough into small pieces to make pretzel bites.

To create a more pronounced crust, utilize the easy baking soda hack for bakery-worthy pretzels without lye. Truth be told, lye or sodium hydroxide is considered a corrosive and a somewhat dangerous solution to work with in the kitchen. If you don't want to trouble yourself with gloves and protective eyewear, strengthen the alkalinity of your baking soda solution by heating powdered baking soda in the oven.

Once pretzels are baked to perfection, serve these bready snacks with an assortment of flavorful condiments. Use a select assortment of your favorite mustards ranging from classic yellow to spicy brown. You can even make your own honey mustard sauce by combining honey, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, and white vinegar. You can also serve your next round of freshly baked pretzels with a warm and savory cheese sauce. Once you get comfortable making chewy pretzels, you'll discover that store-bought pizza dough transforms into delicious focaccia bread as well. Better yet, this handy ingredient can be equally transformed into garlic bread, cinnamon rolls, and makeshift baguettes in a pinch.