Hand-Baked Wholewheat Vegan Pretzels

My biggest triumph so far in the world of Vegan cookery, I made these today for lunch using inspiration from two recipes I found on the internet: Divya Dil Se's Pretzels and Kathy Roy's Vegan Soft Pretzels.

Ingredients:

• 3 Cups/ 275g Plain Wholewheat Flour (I used Allinson’s)
• 2 tsp/ 10 ml Dry Active Yeast (I used Allinson’s Dry Active Yeast Granules, designed for hand baking)
• 2 tsp/ 10 ml sugar
• 1 ½ tsp/ 7.5 ml salt
• 1 Cup/ 100 ml Luke-warm Water + another 1/4 Cup
• 1/2 Cup/ 50 ml Hot Water
• 1 ½ tsp/ 7.5 ml Baking Soda

Method:

1. Dissolve the 2 tsp Dry Active Yeast and 2 tsp Sugar in a small bowl with 1 Cup of Luke-warm Water and leave for a little longer than 10 mins, or until it starts to go a bit foamy.
2. Put the Flour in a large mixing bowl, and gradually pour in the foamy yeast mixture, while stirring.
3. If the mixture seems a bit dry, you can add a bit more warm water - but make sure it's not too sticky! Bear in mind it will naturally become a bit moister once the yeast gets to work.
4. Knead the dough for about 7 minutes. There's no great technique to this, just get stuck in and scrunch and stretch the dough in your hands while turning it around. You'll notice the dough getting stretchier and smoother.
5. Lightly oil the surface of another mixing bowl and transfer the dough across in a ball, turning it around so that it gets competely coated. (You can use whichever oil you prefer for this, but I just spray the bowl with "Fry Light" - how I love that stuff! It's so versatile and cuts out needless hydrogenated fat).
6. Cover the bowl with celophane and leave for an hour or until the dough ball has grown to twice its size.











7. Preheat the oven to 230°C/ 450°F/ Gas Mark 8.
8. Prepare a safe, floured surface to one side. Then remove the celophane from the bowl of dough and pull off small chunks  about the size of your palm, stretching them one by one into long thin snakes. The best way I found of doing this was to flour my hands and squidge and pull the dough alternately until it was long enough. Line the thin pieces of dough up on the floured surface to one side.
9. Boil 1/2 a cup's worth or 50 ml of hot water and pour into a bowl with the 1 1/2 tsp/ 7.5 ml of baking soda, stirring to make a Soda Bath.
10. Grease two baking trays ready to put the pretzels on (again, I use a sheet of foil sprayed with "Fry Light").
11. Shape each long piece of dough into a pretzel shape, dip into the Soda Bath and let the water drip off a bit while reshaping, and place on the baking tray.
12. Sprinkle pretzels with salt and bake for around 8-10 mins.

Mmmmmmm!

Took a while to get the hang of the shape!

Even the malformed ones tasted yummy :)