The perfect game day snack! Use your one cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter to make these soft and chewy pretzels. They also pair great with homemade mustard.
Kitchen Friend Heidi Kleyn from Vicksburg, MI came up with this fabulous soft pretzel recipe using your 1 cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter. This is a great way to use any leftover starter, or if you’re looking for something fun to serve on Super Bowl Sunday.
“Make a tasty dipping sauce with half mustard and half mayo,” Heidi suggests. “These are really great if you eat them warm. Instead of the kosher salt, try topping with sesame seeds, poppy seeds, dried onion or dried garlic.” This recipe can also be used to make breadsticks — just leave them straight instead of twisting into a pretzel-shape.
Amish Friendship Bread Soft Pretzels
Ingredients
- 1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter
- ¾ cup water (lukewarm)
- 2 teaspoons yeast
- 3 cups flour
- ¼ cup instant non-fat dry milk
- 1 teaspoon oil
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ⅓ cup Kosher salt (to top pretzels)
Instructions
- In a stand mixer bowl with dough hook, add starter, water and yeast. Let sit for 5 minutes.
- Add rest of ingredients into mixer bowl and mix until dough pulls away from the sides and a ball forms.
- Grease a bowl, put in ball of dough and cover with plastic wrap.
- Let dough rest and rise for 1 hour. It won’t rise very much.
- Lightly oil work surface and place dough.
- Divide dough into 12 equal pieces.
- Roll out each piece to about 20 inches. Use fingers to roll from inside to outside.
- Take dough and make a U-shape and then cross, bringing it down to form a pretzel. Press dough together so it stays together.
- Get 8 to 10 cups of water and 1 teaspoon of baking soda simmering on the stove top.
- Place one pretzel at a time in the simmering water for 1 minute.
- Remove with slotted spoon.
- Place pretzels, spaced out on a greased pan and sprinkle with kosher salt.
- Preheat oven to 400° F (200° C).
- Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, turning and switching the pretzels once during baking.
- Remove to cooling rack. Bottom of pretzels will be harder and chewier.
- ENJOY!
>> Have you tried this? Share your best pic with us or leave a comment below and let us know how it worked for you!!
How do you make this if you take your starter out of the freezer? Do I feed it and then make pretzels or what? Thanks!
Just converted the recipe to metric using the automatic conversion…not correct! The automatic conversion converts 1 cup starter to 28 g. starter. In reality, 1 cup starter weighs 250 g. Be careful if you use the automatic recipe conversion!
I make them into prezel bites and they go so quickly I have to make a double batch just to make sure I get any!
We love to hear this, Maria! Thanks for sharing. ❤️
I am making this right now! Can’t wait to try it! I love this site so much. Thank you ❤️❤️ when I share my starter I always write your site down
I am going to try this, but I was thinking about halving the salt in the dough. The amount of salt in the dough and on top is overwhelming to me.
Let us know how it goes, Rebecca!
I have made these tasty guys more than a dozen times. It’s a top snack around here. Although I generally shape them into sticks instead of the traditional pretzels shape. Sometimes I sprinkle a few with cinnamon sugar. I highly recommend!
Do you sprinkle the cinnamon sugar before you bake or after?
Just saw this Rebecca-apologies. I add the cinnamon sugar (in equal parts)after an egg white wash but before baking, in place of the coarse salt. Tastes like a churro! Also use the knead cycle of my bread machine instead of the mixer. Yummy recipe!
What kind of yeast? I have rapid rise.
Hi Ashley! This recipe calls for Active Dry Yeast. We haven’t tried it before with Rapid Rise yeast but this post may help if you want to experiment: https://www.myrecipes.com/how-to/cooking-questions/active-dry-vs-instant-yeast
I just got a starter today. Do I wait the 10 days to make these, or can I use it now?
Hi Allyson! This post should help: https://www.friendshipbreadkitchen.com/faq-how-soon-can-i-bake-use-my-amish-friendship-bread-sourdough-starter/. I’d also ask your friend about how active her starter was last week, and make sure you know what day your starter is on (sometimes people don’t give out the starter right away, so your starter might actually be hungry and need to be fed).
Any substitutions for the dry milk? Thanks!
Hi Jennifer! I’m sure there are some recommended dry milk substitutions, but I haven’t tried any with this recipe so can’t vouch for them. If anything, I would skip the dry milk and increase the water to 1 1/2 cups. It’s just a suggestion as I haven’t tried it, but based on more basic soft pretzel recipes, that might be a good workaround. Let me know how it turns out if you end up tinkering with the recipe!
My husband is constantly asking for soft pretzels, but I just haven’t found a good recipe. Will definitely be giving this one a try.
These are delicious! I used buttermilk instead of milk and butter flavored spray. Very tasty. Thank you for the recipe!
I will have to practice to get them as pretty as those pictures. Both sides are flat once I flipped them during baking time.
Could you make these sweet and with cinnamon & raisins, like AUNTI ANNE’S pretzels? God, I love those pretzels. I can’t go too the mall without indulging at AuntieAnne’s.
We love soft pretzels so I will be trying to make these
At the first step, do you mix the ingredients together before letting it sit for 5 minutes?
This may be a silly question, but on what day of the Friendship Bread Started do you prepare this recipe. Do you run through Days 1-10 and make these on Day 10? Or do you bake these on Day 1?
Hi Sarah! It’s a great question. Once a starter goes through at least one feeding cycle (10 days), you can bake anytime. But for recipes like this (and some of the artisan bread recipes), I recommend using the starter the day of feeding or up to one day after — you want to get the starter when it’s most active, which is typically right after a feeding. Let me know what you end up doing! 🙂 Darien
These are awesome and the grandboys love to help make them, they don’t always turn out looking like pretzels though. but they sure taste good.
I have been searching for a soft pretzel recipe, def going to be trying this one!
I just copied this recipe, and now am off to try it. I love that there are so many savory recipes that use Friendship bread starter! You can’t eat cake every day… Thanks for sharing!!
I made these today and they are fantastic. My boys loved them. They have a nice flavor, just a hint of the starter (sough-dough). I do recommend eating them fresh. I hope they taste as good warmed up.
These are definitely going in my ‘saved recipes’ folder!!
Love the options that you can have with the AFB. I too have tried many flavors and variations but would love to try this one. Thanks for the suggestion.
I would definitely give these a try! Have not made them before!
Can you freeze the pretzels after cooking?
Wow, this paragraph is nice, my sister is analyzing such things, therefore I am going to tell her.
Wow! So good! Who knew? I have never tried making pretzels before and these were super easy and delicious.
I made these today and they are quite delicious! Hubby loved them as well. Igot 18 of them and sprinkled some w/ coarse salt, but it was too much. Do you think you could turn these into bagels?
I love ideas for this starter. I have come up with many different flavors of bread, but have never branched off to any other item. my boys love soft pretzels so this is something I will definitely try! Thank You!