Homemade Auntie Anne’s pretzels

So I picked up this book at the library the other week, on a whim: “Even More Top Secret Recipes: More Amazing Kitchen Clones of America’s Favorite Brand-Name Foods.” I got it to show Iain the KFC recipe mentioned on the cover, but when I opened it up the second recipe on the lineup was Auntie Anne’s pretzels.

I never had an Auntie Anne’s until I was in college, visiting the Rosstown Mall in Pittsburgh with my boyfriend. It was an instant conversion. They’re good. They’re loaded with butter and they taste like Mall, but in a very good way.

So, anyway, I like them. They have happy memories for me (that boyfriend? That was Iain). So I dug out all my ingredients after dinner and put my little apron on and started making them. Respect for copyright prevents me from duplicating the recipe here, but it was pretty simple. The only thing was, the dough? Was crazy sticky. I mean it was ridiculous. I was stuck to the dough which was stuck to the counter and it was like a dwarf version of some horror-flick blob monster was eating my hands.

I finally scraped it all off and into what was supposed to be a lightly oiled bowl but in actuality was more like an oil bath for a bobbing lump of sticky dough. It rose sufficiently after 45 minutes sitting inside a cold oven, and I tried to roll it out into the requisite three-foot ropes only it started sticking to everything again, and the dough stretched out when I picked it up, and the water bath pretty much disintegrated what vague pretzel shape might have been eked out by my clumsy hands. I have had some prett-tay rotten luck in the breadmaking arena of late, so this looked to be just one more perverse notch to carve in my … uh, mixed metaphor of a breadpost.

So, I baked it. Er, them. Eight pretzels, seven of which were gross lumpy shapes. Took them out, brushed ‘em with melted butter, and ate one piping hot. And you know what? It was good! It actually tasted as close to an Auntie Anne’s as I think I could get. They came out looking like ass, to be blunt, but they taste wonderful. I am totally going to make them again.

The last pretzels I made (from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook) were much prettier, and Iain likes them better, but they weren’t coated in butter, now were they. So how could they measure up?

May 18, 2008 | Filed Under create

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Comments

4 Responses to “Homemade Auntie Anne’s pretzels”

Christina on May 19th, 2008 8:16 am

My hubby is like a soft pretzle whore! Maybe I should try this so he’ll quit trying to get me to go to the mall.
kate on May 19th, 2008 10:59 am

can you email me the recipe? i want to try it.
Fraulein N on May 21st, 2008 2:25 pm

Auntie Anne’s is the one place in the mall that never lets me down.
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