Home made soft pretzels

It's time to make pretzels again!  I have a hard time keeping these in the house for more than a day or two, they are so very yummy. 

It's a four stage process: mix the dough,  (invisible step: let it rise) shape the dough, blanch the pretzels in a baking soda bath and then bake them.  Lengthy, but SO very worth it.  

Here's the recipe I have been using 

So I mixed my dough with the recipe I normally use and as I was putting the mixer away, (in this ridiculous rental kitchen there isn't space to keep the mixer on the counter) I remembered Helena Bonham Starter in the fridge!  GAAA!! 

Helena is the Sourdough starter I took home from the baking class I took with Judith in the city.  The baker told us we should name our starter and introduce her to everyone with whom we share a fridge to prevent an unfortunate mishap come trash day.  Everyone loves her. 

Now I am having a bake off: me, making the old recipe in one corner and in the other: Me, making a new sourdough pretzel recipe. 

I found a sourdough pretzel recipe over at JoyTheBaker's site.

Which pretzel will be the best?  Interesting chemistry note here, the recipes are very similar, but my regular one calls for bathing the pretzels in a pot of boiling baking soda- water before baking them (the dough feels kind of crusty when you pull it out of the bath, so I assume this is to achieve the wonderful chewy brown exterior) and the new sourdough recipe skips this step.  

I decided I would a tray of the new sourdough first, boil half and leave the other half plain.  This way I can finish off the batch in the best way possible. 

Here they are in the baking soda bath, the photo is a little steamy.     

The top one hasn't been boiled

The bottom one has. See how the color is different, it looks a little crusty and it's puffed up?  

Here's how they lined up on the tray:

Here's how they came out:

Looks pretty obvious that boiling in the baking soda bath is what makes pretzels more than just bread. This fact did not keep the kids from eating both kinds.  There was one kid (of 4) who said she preferred the unboiled kind.  I prefer the boiled ones, turns out, here, looks aren't deceiving at all, the unboiled really just taste and feel like bread.

But the original experiment was old recipe vs. sourdough recipe! How'd it turn out? Who won?

Here are the final products. 

They are both chewy on the outside and soft on the inside.  The size difference is due to my not weighing the dough pieces to be certain they were he same size. They were both bathed and washed with beaten egg (for shine) and topped with salt.  

The taste testing kids were split evenly for their favorite.  But I will tell you the truth.  They taste exactly the same.  And they are delicious.  Both recipes are the same amount of work, the original recipe produces more dough, but it's really not much more.  So if you have sourdough starter kicking around in the fridge, make them that way, it's a great way to use it.  If not, make them with the old recipe.  Either way, they aren't going to last long.