Bread Machine Homemade Soft Pretzel Bites

Homemade Soft Pretzel Bites made in a Bread Machine are about the tastiest thing you will try! Don’t skip on the baking soda step in order to keep these tasting amazing!

Do you have a bread machine that you love? I adore my bread machine and use it to make the dough more than pretty much anything else. I don’t have to knead the dough or worry about it rising. It is the workhorse while I can get other things done. When we were getting ready to make soft pretzel bites to go with the Smoked Trout Dip and the Smoked Cheese Beer Dip, I never thought of making my dough by hand – the machine is just too convenient.

🍽️ Recipe Instructions

Step One: Pour the water into the basin of the bread machine. Add flour and sugar. Dig a tiny hole in the center, place the yeast and close the lid.

Step Two: Turn the bread machine to the dough cycle, which should be about 90 minutes.

Step Three: When the dough is complete, roll it out onto a lightly floured surface into an 18×24 inch square and make one-inch long strips. Once they are cut into strips, cut them down into one-inch pieces. You should yield about 48 1” x 1” pieces of dough.

Step Four: Boil 6-8 cups of water and ⅓ cup of baking soda.

Step Five: Once it comes to boil, place 6-8 pretzel bites in the water for 30 seconds. You will see the pretzel bites dip down to the bottom of the pan and then rise to the top as they cook. Once 30 seconds are up, remove the pretzel bites and place them on a prepared sheet pan that is lined with a Silpat or parchment paper.

Step Six: Sprinkle coarse ground sea salt on top of the pretzels. Make sure to add the salt while the dough is still wet, so it sticks during the baking.

Step Seven: Cook them in the oven at 425 degrees for 8-10 minutes. We did one batch for 8 minutes and one batch for 10 and we enjoyed the batch baked at 10 minutes more as it was toastier and a little bit browner.

💡 Recipe Tips

The baking soda is magic for this recipe! The boiling water starts the cooking process and the baking soda turns the water more alkaline, which changes the flavor and allows the pretzel bites to turn brown. Commercially, the professionals use a food-grade lye. For our purposes, a nice baking soda bath will do the trick just fine!

There is no way to make this step go faster so just turn on some music and knock them out. We were able to add seven or eight into the pot of boiling water at a time. Don’t try to add more as they will stick to each other.

📌 Serving Options

• As mentioned above, these go great with the Smoked Trout dip, Smoked Beer Queso and we devoured the new Beer Smoked Cheese Dip!
• Another way to enjoy these would be to prep pizza sauce and use the pretzels to dip in them. Sprinkle the pizza sauce with a little bit of parmesan cheese to take these to the next level.
• Place dip in a small slow cooker and serve the pretzel bites at a potluck at work! They will be one of the first to go!

These are perfect to take these to the football parties, soccer matches, and afterschool snacks.

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