If you love a big soft pretzel, but feel like they're impossible to make... this is for you.
So, before the whole TikTok debacle last week, I posted what I thought would be "one last video" until all this nonsense blew over. It was a very brief video of my friends and I making soft pretzels together, as my friend gave us all the tutorial, and as it turns out... it was really easy. I'm pulling this recipe from Sally's Baking Addiction, and doubling it because the original made about 6 and I wanted to share. (Check out Sally's blog; she's got some amazing recipes if you're into baking!)
I know I posted the ingredients and steps briefly there, but this time, I wanted to give a more complete, thorough set of directions, as well as a bit of a discussion on the magic you can get out of a good soft pretzel. (And that's some knowledge you can take with you anywhere—be it in your own home kitchen or the next time you're out and about and spot one of those little soft pretzel stands wherever you are. God knows we all love some Auntie Annie's when we're traipsing around the mall or something.)
Now, depending on the flavor of pretzel you prefer, of course, the magic can change—but at its very basic level, the pretzel itself has some interesting connotations and ingredients we can draw on. In fact, this may be the first time we ever look not just at an ingredient, but a chemical compound (baking soda, AKA sodium bicarbonate). That, along with the wheat, the salt, and the sugar make this a solid recipe for the most inconspicuous, simple, yet delicious protection and prosperity magic.
Let's take a look.
Magic in Classic Soft Pretzels
Now, here's a little fun for you:
Do You Prefer Sweet or Savory Pretzels?
Sweet! (Cinnamon Sugar, Chocolate, etc.)
Savory! (Salt, Cheese, Garlic Butter, etc.)
As I said earlier: depending on what flavor you choose, the magic changes dramatically. Going for a more "get away from me" or protective bend on top of the base protective qualities of pretzels? Maybe a garlic butter pretzel would be your jam. Looking to add onto the wheat's already lucky, abundant quality and get some more flare, inspiration, and power into the mix? That sounds like a job for a cinnamon sugar pretzel! Or maybe you're trying to get a little bit more of a romantic, love spell type quality as you share these with your partner, in which case, the chocolate pretzel is bound to do you good (either by weaving the chocolate into the dough or making a delicious chocolate dipping sauce).
No matter what you're doing here, though, as I said: we're looking at the pretzel's most base ingredients (pun fully intended, as baking soda is basic on the pH scale). With salt, wheat, sugar, and baking soda, we have ingredients that can grid your energy for:
Protection (salt)
Stability (baking soda)
Banishment (baking soda)
Prosperity (wheat)
Health (wheat)
Luck (sugar)
Ease (sugar)
Purification (salt, baking soda)
Strength (baking soda)
"Sara, what the hell?" you may be saying. "Where did you get these associations for baking soda? Who even uses this in magic?"
Well, I mean... take a look at the chemical structure of baking soda (NaHCO₃):
Now, for folks who have uteri, you might look at this molecule and say that this structure here looks familiar. You might also therefore say this molecule itself has the ability to help you structure your magic with qualities of fertility, life, and growth, which may make it another fantastic friend to pair with wheat in your baking adventures.
However, as we look at this compound, it also looks stable, doesn't it? Like a tree, it has one stable trunk of oxygen and double bonded with carbon, and then it branches out into the balanced sodium and oxygen ions on one side, and the oxygen and hydrogen on the other side. And looking further at what this compound does physically in the world a la BYJU's (emphasis mine on each of these):
It is used as pest control to kill cockroaches and controlling fungal growth
It is used as a disinfectant
It is used to protect armpits from bad smell and irritation
It is used in cooking especially to bake food items
It is used in medicine to be injected intravenously to the prevention of chemotherapy side effects
It is used to wash kitchen products due to its antibacterial properties
It is used to have clean teeth and mouth
We can see that its main quality is to get rid of things we don't want (smells, bacteria, even bugs) and to stave off negative effects of certain medical treatments like chemotherapy. Moreover, these atoms in here (carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium) are all essential to life and make up the majority of our being; it is a mix of these earthy (carbon, sodium) and airy (hydrogen, oxygen) substances, balanced in its elemental associations. And of course, again, being basic, it reduces the pH level of substances, a direct counter to the acidity of other substances and giving it qualities like bitterness, slipperiness, and soapiness. So of course, what it does in the mundane on a physical level, we can say it carries the energy of on the mystical level.
And there you have it. Now you can get inspired to go deeper than the actual food item in your hands and pull the magic out of each and every molecule in those suckers, too.
But all this aside, here, the main elemental qualities here are water and earth (namely earth), with Saturn and Venus doing our heavy lifting in the planetary influences. In so simple a baked good comes just a touch of emotional connection with sugar, and then the grounding, fortifying, prosperous power of earth with everything else—and a level mix of Venus and Saturn means that we'll be in touch with our dreams, our emotions, and our sense of beauty just as much as we are with our sense of duty, responsibility, and trust in our abilities and experience. It's a great blend of energy to make sure that you never lose your sights for the things that could be better in life, while also staying slow, steady, and most importantly, consistent on the road ahead.
Classic Soft Pretzels
Prep time: 30min
Cook time: 15min
Makes 12 pretzels
Stew Ingredients:
3 cups (720ml) of warm water
4 and a half 1/2 teaspoons (14g) instant or active dry yeast
2 teaspoons salt
2 Tablespoons brown sugar or granulated sugar
2 Tablespoons (28g) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cool
6 and 2/3 a cup to 8 cups (838g - 1 kg) all-purpose flour, plus more for hands and work surface
coarse salt or coarse sea salt for sprinkling
Baking Soda Bath:
1/2 cup (120g) baking soda
9 cups (2.13L) water
Directions:
Whisk yeast into warm water, then allow to sit for 1 min. After, add brown sugar, regular salt, and melted butter (make sure it’s not too hot), and mix.
Add flour in cup by cup until a dough forms. Mix with a wooden spoon or, if using a mixer, with the dough hook attachment.
Knead for 5 minutes either by hand or in a mixer. You know it’s kneaded enough when:
You poke it and it slowly bounces back
It can pass the windowpane test: where you stretch the dough and hold it up to the light. If you can see the light through it without it tearing, it’s ready to use.
Shape the dough into a ball, cover with a towel, and let rest for 10 min.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
Set up your baking soda bath: add the baking soda to a pot of water and bring to a boil.
Cut your dough into roughly 75g pieces and roll out the dough into snakes with your hands (like you did with Playdough when you were a kid).
Form the pretzel by taking the two ends, bringing them up as if you were about to make a circle, and then twisting both ends together and pulling them down to the circle’s bottom. Press them in so they stick together and hold their shape.
You could also make pretzel sticks, little pretzel bites, etc. depending on how small you cut them and if you don’t wanna bother shaping them.
Boil in the baking soda bath for 20-30 seconds, then lay on a lined baking sheet
For savory pretzels: sprinkle with coarse salt, then bake for 12-15 minutes.
For cinnamon sugar pretzels: skip the salt, melt more butter, mix cinnamon and sugar together, and once the pretzels are baked, brush with butter and dip in your mix.
You can dip your pretzels in things like mustard, spicy cheese, or the like—or chocolate sauce if you're making a sweet one. Either way, delicious.
It was definitely fun making these with my good friends—and while I always like a good pretzel, there was something extra special and delicious about one fresh out of the oven, y'know? In wild times like the ones we're living in, it's crucial we have even the simplest pleasures to ground us in our own lives.
Make a pretzel. Eat a pretzel. Relax. ♥
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Sara Raztresen is a Slovene-American writer, screenwriter, and Christian witch. Her fantasy works draw heavily on the wisdom she gathers from her own personal and spiritual experience, and her spiritual practice borrows much of the whimsy and wonder that modern society has relegated to fairy-and-folktale. Her goal is to help people regain their spiritual footing and discover God through a new (yet old) lens of mysticism.
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