These vegan sourdough soft pretzels are made with sourdough starter discard and no added yeast. Sourdough pretzels are a great way to use discarded starter and make a versatile snack that can be combined with a wide variety of vegan dipping sauces.
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Sourdough Inspiration
The day after our wedding in October, I was watching The Great British Baking Show and suddenly became moved to make sourdough starter. I had been thinking about it ever since I read Sourdough by Robin Sloan. If any book will make you want to bake sourdough bread, it’s that one. I love the subtlety of a novel that is just about the struggles and beauty of every day life with tiny bits of science fiction and fantasy sneaking in. Robin Sloan’s first novel, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, is one of my favorite books of all time (granted, that’s a long list, ha), and I know many a sourdough baker who started after reading Sourdough.
I knew I would need bottled water to create a starter since our tap water is chlorinated, and I thought I needed grapes (turns out I didn’t) – and I had both bottled water and grapes left over for the wedding! What better way to begin a sourdough starter that would live with our family than from ingredients from our wedding?
Sourdough Starter
So I created Lancre, my sourdough starter named after the home of most of the witches in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. I used the water from the wedding and the grapes (even though they weren’t necessary), along with some wild grapes from our backyard. If you’re interested in creating a starter of your own, I find the information over at The Clever Carrot to be the clearest and most helpful of all the sourdough websites I’ve explored.
I’ve been trying recipes here and there to use the starter that I need to discard when I feed Lancre each week. I made some great pancakes a couple weeks ago and failed miserably at making crumpets not long after that. I was really excited to find some recipes for soft pretzels using sourdough starter discard, but none of the recipes gave me exactly what I wanted: vegan, soft pretzels using sourdough starter discard and not using added yeast. I found a great recipe for vegan sourdough pretzels from Holy Cow! Vegan, but it called for added instant yeast.
Vegan Sourdough Soft Pretzels Recipe
What I present to you below is my variation on that recipe without the added yeast. To accommodate the change, I handle the dough much more similarly to sourdough bread dough and my recipe calls for a much longer rise time. For a quicker version, if you have instant yeast on hand, check out Holy Cow! Vegan’s recipe.
If you try these out, please let me know what you think and leave a rating!
Soft Pretzels – Sourdough Starter Discard (Vegan, no added yeast)
Ingredients
- 1 cup sourdough starter discard
- 1/2 cup warm water
- 1/4 cup warm plant milk (soy, almond, oat, etc.)
- 3 cups bread flour or all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups all-purpose and 1 cup bread flour because that's what I had on hand)
- 1 tbsp maple syrup or other sweetener (sugar, agave, etc.)
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp salt (plus some to sprinkle on top of pretzels if desired)
Glaze
- 1 tbsp sweetener
- 2 tbsp water
Instructions
- Combine the sourdough starter, water, and plant milk. Stir until starter is dissolved.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until a shaggy dough forms.
- Autolyse: Cover the bowl and allow the shaggy dough to rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. This will allow the gluten to start forming and make the dough more workable.
- Knead the dough until it comes together and forms a workable ball. If the dough is too dry or hard, add small amounts of water.
- Place the dough ball in a large, lightly greased (I use coconut oil to grease, but any plant oil will do) bowl. Cover in a relatively airtight manner. I will sometimes layer two plastic shopping bags over the top and secure with a rubber band, and have also found that a heavy pot lid without vents works well with one of my bowls. If you use plastic wrap, that works.
- Allow the dough to rest until it grows 50% to 100% – ie, until it gets half way to doubling or more. I rested it for 12 hours overnight. You can also put it in the oven with the oven light on to gently increase the warmth, which will cause it to rise more. This step will take anywhere from 3 to 12 hours depending on your starter, air temperature, and schedule.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
- Place the dough on a lightly greased surface and knead a few times into a ball.
- Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, covering the portions you are not working with a damp dish towel while they wait.
Shaping the Pretzels – Great fun for kids!
- Take one piece of dough and roll it out into a long snake – about 8 inches long.
- Lay the snake in a hill or "n" shape.
- Cross the legs of your n so you now have an upside down teardrop with legs.
- Cross the legs over again the same direction you did the first time. Now you have an upside down teardrop with a twist at the bottom and very short legs.
- Grasp the loop of the teardrop and fold it down to the bottom of the twist. This will result in the loop making a circle around the twist, the traditional pretzel shape. You may need to stretch the loop a little during this step to get the shape right, and that's totally fine! Also, you'll see from my pictures that they don't have to be perfectly shaped. It's more important that they're fun to make and taste great!
- Place the pretzel twists on a lightly greased cookie sheet.
- Mix the glaze.
- Brush the glaze evenly over the top of all the pretzels. We used our fingers for this since my kitchen brush has gone missing!
- Sprinkle lightly with salt if desired. Ours were very lightly salted with regular table salt.
- Bake for 27 minutes. For darker pretzels, you may want to place them on the top rack or bake them slightly longer.
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