I would be a liar if I said I didn’t miss a mall pretzel drizzled with ooey gooey cheese, so when I stumbled on this recipe for soft pretzel sticks from Valley Natural Foods and I could not wait a single day to make them. Armed with a friend who is also restricted with her diet due to Lyme Disease, we strapped the kids into the van and headed to our local Natural Food store to buy the necessary ingredients. An hour and a half later we were devouring these warm bites of pretzel-breadstick deliciousness.
As you will see the recipe calls for powdered milk. Adapting this recipe to make it dairy free came with much thought as the natural food store we were at did not carry a non-dairy powdered milk substitute. Amanda came up with the great idea to warm almond milk and substitute milk for the 2/3 C water to activate the yeast. By sheer trial and error we tried it and it worked! I will leave the recipe as is, as it should be fairly easy to find a non-dairy powdered milk. However I have added an “optional” list if you are unable to find a substitute for powdered milk.
Ingredients
1 Tbsp. yeast, active dry
2/3 C. water, warm
1/2 tsp. sugar
1/2 C. sorghum flour
1/2 C. tapioca flour
1 Tbsp. milk powder (non-fat dry)
2 tsp. xanthan gum
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. unflavored gelatin powder
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. apple cider vinegar
1 egg white
2 Tbsp. milk
2-3 Tbsp. Kosher or coarse salt
OPTIONAL
Substitute the 2/3 C warm water with warm almond milk
while omitting the milk powder.
DIRECTIONS
Combine yeast, warm water, and sugar in a small bowl, set aside for 5 minutes or until yeast is foamy. In medium mixer bowl, blend flours, dry milk powder, xanthan gum, salt, onion powder, and gelatin powder on low speed. Add yeast mixture, olive oil and vinegar; beat on high speed for 3 minutes.
Place dough in a large, heavy-duty plastic resealable bag that has 1/4” opening cut into one corner (makes 1/2” circle). Squeeze dough through opening onto baking sheet that has been coated with cooking spray. It works best to hold the bag upright as you squeeze the dough out. You may make traditional pretzel shapes, but straight 3” sticks are easiest. Brush lightly with beaten egg white, then sprinkle with coarse salt.
Place pretzels in warm place to rise for 10-15 minutes. Preheat oven to 400°F. Bake until pretzels are dry and golden brown, about 10-13 minutes. When cool, store in airtight container. Makes 2-1/2 dozen pretzel sticks. These are best devoured the day you bake them as they got more and more chewy as the days went on. We agreed that next time we would try to freeze them and only take out and thaw as we needed them.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Soft Pretzel Sticks
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Also OPTIONAL:
ReplyDeleteIf you can't find unflavored gelatin or eat a vegan diet, you can buy Pamona's Pectin. Mix the 2 packets together (the pectin packet and the calcium packet), then use 1 tsp. of the mix in place of the gelatin. We also found this out by trial and error---the store didn't have gelatin and I figured HEY! Pectin, we make jelly with that, that must be like gelatin! After some google work, I discovered I was quite wrong, and also quite confused by the 2 packets concept, but Kristie, in all her brilliance, came up with this solution. She's a clever woman, that one...
These were so good. We were discussing that you could also try them with a variety of alterations---adding herbs or garlic, taking out the salt and onion and adding cinnamon (you'd almost HAVE to put those giant sugar crystals on top of them if you can eat sugar...), etc. If you're a df cheese-eater, you could always sprinkle that on them too. Personally, I have yet to adapt to the stuff, but I know others have grown accustomed to it.