♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, until recently, I didn't make a lot of homemade bread, and now I make it almost every week.

Now, the difference is I've learned some tricks and techniques that make homemade bread so simple, and we're going to share some of them with you today.

We're also going to make a couple of recipes you probably haven't made before.

One is beer pretzels.

So, these are soft pretzels like you find in Germany or Austria, with three different kinds of seeds on top.

They're absolutely delicious.

They're not hard to make, but it takes a little bit of time.

Then we're going to make challah, but we're going to use a technique we borrow from Japanese milk bread.

It's called the tangzhong method.

You take flour and liquid, and you make a gel out of it and use that as the basis.

So you end up with a really soft, wonderful crumb and a bread that'll last for days.

So please stay tuned as we help you make homemade bread at home maybe every week.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You're about to make two beautiful but technically a little more difficult breads-- pretzels and challah.

In order for you to feel confident, we're going to take just a minute to get comfortable with some vocabulary.

We're going to talk about kneading and proofing, and to do that, I'm going to work with a semolina bread that's really going to show you the right phase of kneading and the right stage of proofing that you need to make perfect pretzels and perfect challah.

So I have some semolina flour, some bread flour, yeast and salt in here, and I'm going to mix together water, olive oil, and a little honey for sweetness.

So, I'm going to go ahead and turn this on to low.

And add my water.

With bread recipes, we give a lot of visual cues, because every house is quite different, and temperature and humidity levels do affect your bread to a certain degree-- temperature much more so than humidity.

So if we only gave you timing cues, they wouldn't work in every household.

So, understanding the visual cues for bread will really set you up for success.

I want you to be a confident baker.

So why do we need bread?

Well, think about our end result.

We want a beautifully risen, poofy bread in this case.

We need to develop structure or strength in our flour, so that the gases that we developed through fermentation have a way to get trapped.

And when it bakes, it goes like this, but doesn't explode out the top.

Or it doesn't just do this.

So, if you want a poofy bread, it's really important to develop strength, and that strength is gluten, and gluten is developed when water and wheat flours mix together.

This is starting to come together, but I think it's pretty obvious this is under-kneaded.

It's still quite wet, and if I were to touch it, it's going to stick to my hands.

So, that's pretty easy.

So let's take it a little further, to when it starts getting hard to figure out if you're done or not.

And a quick tip is you're probably not done.

It's much more likely you're going to under-knead your dough than over-knead your dough.

Okay, so here's a stage where a lot of my students start getting curious if dough's done.

it's coming away from the bowl fairly cleanly and it's no longer a shaggy mass.

You can tell it's still pretty sticky.

And this is not a super hydration sourdough loaf that you want to be the wild woolly beast of the swamp.

This is supposed to be a supple dough.

This is very under-kneaded, still pretty obviously so, so let's take it a little further.

So this is when my students might say, "Oh, well, it's really not sticking."

"It's completely clear of the bowl.

"It's even cleaning my bowl for me, it must be done."

Let's look at it.

It's a little more elastic.

It's not just a swamp thing.

It's not just a shaggy mass, but it's still pretty sticky.

And if I stretch it at all, it just breaks.

This is still under-kneaded.

See how gummy it is?

Let's take it a little further, Okay, at this stage, you just need to break off a little bit, right?

Because it's smooth and it's supple and it's elasticy.

We're just going to try and stretch one piece of it and see if we can get it almost transparent and hold its structure.

See, that's perfect.

That's strength.

It's not breaking.

We're building that good architecture.

We're developing the gluten.

The gases we produce during fermentation will create lift, but not be able to escape.

This is beautiful to work with now.

we've given it the proper amount of kneading time.

It's not sticking to my hands at all.

This is when breadmaking is pleasurable.

So we're going to leave this in here, covered in plastic for bulk fermentation, which I'll get to in a minute.

But first I want to prove to you why it's so important to knead it thoroughly and not under-knead it.

So if you under-knead bread, this is what you get.

This is under-kneaded bread.

It's too dense.

All the gas went out, and we just collapsed down into this very thick, doughy, gummy semolina situation.

However... if you knead your dough properly and then proof it properly, you end up with something like this!

And that's what we want.

Even crumb all the way from top to bottom.

And I could definitely slice this, put on some condiments, little deli meat, some lettuce, tomato, and I'd be very happy.

So now let's talk about proofing.

This first rise is called bulk fermentation.

Bulk because we haven't yet shaped this.

If you were going to make two or three loaves, they'd all still be in here.

It's a bulk of dough, and it's going to rise.

And we're producing carbon dioxide, which is your lift.

But we're also producing other compounds that are going to help with flavor development, how long the bread lasts, how shelf stable it is, and its ultimate texture.

Once it rises, either we punch it down-- you see that phrase a lot-- or it collapses.

Then we shape it.

Either it's going to become its own round loaf and it's a single loaf like this, and then we put it in whatever it's going to do its final rise in.

Maybe it's a sandwich tin, maybe it's a basket or a banneton.

That is called proofing.

That's the last stage before it goes in the oven.

So, bulk fermentation in the bowl, all of the dough together, divide, shape, let it rise in its final container for a second time, and then that's proofing.

Once you understand how to knead properly and the difference between bulk fermentation and proofing, you're good to go.

You're ready to make pretzels and challah.

And I want to leave you with this.

So I was recently in the Cotswolds in London, baking with Elaine Boddy, who is an incredible sourdough baker.

And her best words of wisdom is that no matter what, it's going to turn out great.

All homemade baked bread tastes wonderful.

♪ ♪ - I'm sick and tired of everything having to be in half an hour.

- Right.

- Sometimes you got to spend some time.

And so a warm, soft pretzel-- well, there may be better things in life, but it's right up there in the top five.

So, these are amazing.

It's going to take some time.

There's a little bit of science, but I think this is definitely something you should do at home.

I'm a big supporter of this recipe.

- And I'm right there with you, a huge fan of this recipe.

And you talk about time-- time really is one of the ingredients in the recipe.

It's needed, but they are not complicated.

As you said, even kids can make these, which are great.

So we're starting with bread flour, and of course we have some yeast.

And yeast is really the thing that demands the time you're talking about, because it needs time to ferment and develop flavor.

Then we have some salt.

A little bit of soft butter.

This is a lager-style German beer.

You could use an amber beer or something with a little bit of color to it if you wanted to.

This is barley malt syrup.

You could use molasses or honey, but they're a little bit different than barley malt syrup.

What's cool about this is it comes from a malted grain.

This is used for pretzels.

It's also a common ingredient in bagels.

So we have those in there, and then we can both pour in the liquids, if you would.

I've got the water... - And I got the beer.

- And you got the beer, and there's just enough beer there to leave a little in the bottle... (laughing): for-- for a little snack.

So we'll turn it on low for about a minute or two until we get a shaggy dough going, and then we'll turn it on a medium and it goes for a good six to seven minutes.

That lets the dough come together, become homogeneous, and also helps develop the gluten.

I'd say that's pulled together.

Now, here's where we test the moisture level of the dough.

- I get to touch it?

- Yeah.

- Tacky, but still cool.

- Isn't it?

Now, you talked about time.

This is the first element of time.

We're going to cover this, put it in the fridge for a minimum of eight hours, up to 24 hours.

So this next step is something that's going to benefit the pretzels without actually being in the pretzel dough.

This is going to make a water bath that we dip the pretzels in like bagels.

Now, in that water bath is going to be an alkaline solution.

But the highest alkali and the most traditional ingredient used is lye.

And you can see it's white and very granular.

But we're going to use the alternative.

Set this aside.

There are so many common ingredients in our pantry that have hidden science just waiting for us to discover.

One of them is baking soda.

It is an alkaline substance.

So, I'm going to spread this out.

Okay.

Now, if you heat the baking soda, that actually converts the sodium bicarbonate to sodium carbonate, and it raises the pH level.

So we're getting the baking soda a little bit closer to the pH level of lye.

This is going to go in a low oven, 275, for about an hour.

It won't change color or anything.

You don't even need to stir it.

An hour, take it out, let it cool, and it's ready to go.

And you can do this a week in advance.

Okay, we had the slow fermentation in the fridge.

Then we punched the dough down and let it sit out for two hours at room temp.

And now we have that little speedier fermentation.

So we've already done two revolutions, right?

So we need to divide this into ten.

We're making ten pretzels.

Just get it elongated a little bit.

That makes it easier to divvy up.

So, five.

One, two, three... - But that's a good trick, is to mark it first and if one of them looks really off... - Yeah.

- Yeah.

- These are going to get pre-shaped into six-inch logs, very informal, but you want to get them as even as you can.

- So, we should make a point, though, about not having a floured surface.

- We should.

- Because you can't stretch things if it's not attaching itself a little bit to the wood.

- Right.

You need the traction of the dough on the surface.

- The friction.

- Yes.

we just gave these a little bit of exercise.

They need to rest a little bit so the gluten can relax, because the big stretch is coming.

- You're going to tell me I have to make this like 12 feet long or something, right?

- 26 inches.

That's it.

- 26 inches?

- 26 inches.

It's six inches now, you're going to add 20 to it.

Start with the palm of your hand, not your fingers.

Start with firm pressure, roll in the middle, and then start rolling outward to the ends with the same firm pressure, and you're going to get an even rope.

- How'd you do that so fast?

- Firmer pressure.

- Jeez.

This looks like a squid on the end, I gotta be... This is too thick on the end.

- Palm of the hand.

- Palm of the hand.

- In the middle first.

- Okay.

- Hard, firm pressure.

Firmer than you think, the dough can take it.

- Well, there you go.

- Right.

Okay, so now to make the knot.

- Okay.

- We're going to do this more than once, so you will have time to get it down pat, right.

Loop it around, give it one over twist, And then these little ends here, flip them over and attach them to what's called the belly.

And then you can stretch the pretzel open a little bit.

We're going to put five pretzels on each sheet tray, so space them accordingly, because they're going to continue to rise, obviously.

- Okay, now I just want to point out, that after getting a B- on the first four, this, this is actually-- look at this.

- Look at that, yeah.

- Look at that.

- Five pretzels later, that's all it took.

- It took me four practice pretzels.

Yeah, now I'm... - And if you were doing the whole batch, you'd have six really nice pretzels.

- (snorts) - Okay.

- But as it is, I have four kind of mediocre ones.

- It's pretzels.

So we're going to let these sit, rest, rise just a little bit while the baking soda is mixed with water and brought to the boil.

This is what we baked.

We're actually adding sodium carbonate-- ooh, nice.

We just want to make sure it's fully dissolved.

These pretzels will go in.

They sink, they rise really quickly, and 30 seconds is all they take.

Then we put them back on the sheet tray, and we'll do our egg white and seeds.

All right, splitting the belly.

Now, the reason for this is as these bake and they rise, they're going to split somewhere, because the crust forms quickly.

So, if you make a slice in the belly, that gives the pretzels the place to split that looks really nice.

You don't want these to sit too long.

We're going to brush the egg white just over the top.

We have three-seed pretzels, and we use pumpkin seeds, caraway seeds-- one of my favorite-- and sunflower seeds.

And of course, what's a pretzel without the flaky sea salt.

So hot oven, 15 minutes or so.

15 to 16 minutes is all these take.

If you want to bake both of these trays at once, you position the oven racks in the top third and the bottom third.

You take them 15 minutes and just switch halfway through, that's it.

Or you can bake one tray at a time.

It really won't hurt, but we are ready to do both.

♪ ♪ - Mm.

♪ ♪ - Well, I would just like to say this is a big lesson, a life lesson here.

- (laughs) - Right?

'Cause remember, when I shaped my pretzels, they didn't look nearly as good as yours.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Except for my last one was pretty good.

But once they're baked, nobody's gonna-- can tell the difference.

So this is like, "don't sweat it."

- So, the lesson is "the more seeds, the better"?

- Well, I was going to say, the lesson is we're all going to die, so what difference does it make?

- I don't know.

- That was a paraphrase, by the way.

- More seeds.

- But anyway, yeah, you know, when it gets-- comes out of the oven, you can hide all sorts of, you know, mistakes.

- Now, if we had used lye in the water bath, we could call these laugenbrezel, which means lye pretzel.

That's an actual name for them.

- We can call it ausgezeichnet pretzel.

Excellent pretzel.

- Excellent.

Yes, we can.

- Mm.

- Oh, I love that.

Crunchy on the outside, the chewy crust.

- This is gonna be the longest episode of Milk Street because you and I are gonna stand here and eat all of these... - (laughing): I know.

- ...over the next 45 minutes.

There's nothing hard about this.

I mean, the best thing is this kind of baking is so forgiving.

It takes time, but it's not hard.

No matter how badly you roll it out or fold it up, it's going to look great when it's done.

So, if you want to make three-seed beer pretzels at home, you know how to do it.

You can't go wrong.

They'll look great and they'll taste even better.

- I thought you were bringing the beer.

- The question is, are they called beer pretzels because they have beer in them?

- Yes.

- Are they called beer pretzels because you drink beer with them?

- Yes.

- Both.

- Yeah, This is good.

♪ ♪ - As the knife guy here at Milk Street, I get a lot of questions about sharpening knives.

And most of those questions are actually about sharpening serrated knives.

We all have one of those serrated knives in our knife drawer that's been there forever and it's-- it's worked, and it's worked, and it's worked.

And then suddenly it starts sliding off a loaf of bread or tearing tomatoes or that sort of thing.

And a lot of people think you can't sharpen serrated knives, but in fact, you really can.

So a serrated knife has two parts.

It has the sharp, pointy teeth and the scalloped gullets.

So you wouldn't use a normal honing rod, because it's too fat to fit into the gullets.

It's not going to do anything.

What you do need is something that's, well, it's really easy and it's really cheap, and that is a chainsaw file.

So, you can find these at most hardware stores.

They're five, ten bucks, and it's a very fine file, often diamond-edged.

But what we're going to do is sharpen the teeth of our serrated knife.

So you're just going to follow the bevel that's already there from the butt end all the way to the tip.

We'll bring that edge right back.

So this should be good as new.

Now remember, give the blade a wipe before using it.

Let's give that a try.

Oh, beautiful.

You know, if that blade was dull, it's going to slide right off that really crisp hard crust, but it just bites right back in, because we use that file to bring those teeth right back.

So, you may think your serrated knife is done, but once you learn how to sharpen it, it'll be factory fresh in minutes.

♪ ♪ - We took one of the key techniques for making Japanese milk bread-- a water roux, or a tangzhong-- and use that to make our challah bread.

A tangzhong or water roux is a mixture of water and a starch that you cook down into a gel-like paste and that helps hydrate the bread so it's not only fluffier, but also lasts a little bit longer.

And in our challah bread, this really gave it great structure and that really nice feathery crumb that you associate with challah bread.

okay, so first we're going to start our water roux.

We need about one cup of water, and a third a cup of bread flour.

I'm just going to whisk that together, and we're going to cook this on medium for about two to four minutes until this gets nice and thick and we can actually pull a spatula through it and it leaves a little bit of a trail.

Now I'm going to put this in the bowl of my stand mixer and I'm going to cover it with plastic wrap directly on top, so it doesn't form that skin you get when you have like a pudding or something like that.

And we're just going to let that sit for about 30 minutes.

So while my water roux is cooling down, I'm going to macerate my golden raisins.

So we're using golden raisins in our challah.

We really liked those for this.

I'm going to add a little bit of orange juice here and just bring this to a simmer.

Then the raisins will absorb all the orange juice, so they'll be nice and plump when we put them in our challah.

So, our tangzhong has cooled to room temperature, And I'm going to whisk in three eggs.

And to that, I'm going to add some honey.

Challah is typically made with an oil instead of butter.

We decided to use olive oil just to give it a little extra flavor so we're not using just a neutral, flavorless oil.

So now that this is all whisked together, I'm going to add bread flour.

We have our instant yeast and some salt.

I'm going to put this on my mixer and I'm going to mix it on low with a dough hook until the dough is sticky and a little bit elastic.

That's going to take about five minutes.

So while we're waiting for this to mix up, I'm going to take my raisins and drain them.

I don't want to add that extra liquid to the bread, because it will make it too wet.

So I'm going to strain them and then press out any extra liquid that the raisins haven't absorbed.

You can see that it's holding on to the dough hook without breaking immediately.

So I know that it's developed the gluten that I want.

So now I'm just going to scrape it off the dough hook and I'm going to add my raisins that I've drained.

And now I'm going to beat this on medium low for another five minutes.

All right, it looks like we're pretty good here.

Our dough is tacky, but it's not wet.

It's not really sticking to my finger when I touch it.

So I'm going to push all of this into the center.

And then what we want to do is cover this and let it sit for about an hour and a half.

And you want to make sure you're paying attention to the temperature of your kitchen.

If your kitchen is really cold, this is going to take a little bit longer.

If it's a really hot day and your kitchen is hot, it might take less time, but you do want it to double, because if it doesn't, then again, you're not going to get that really fluffy loaf that you're looking for.

So make sure it's doubled in volume before you get ready to shape it.

While that was rising, I oiled two 9x5 pans.

I put a piece of 8-by-14-inch parchment across them.

So that makes a little sling that we can pull the bread out of, and those are all set to go.

I'm going to cut this in half.

You're going to get... it's about 650 grams per half, or about 23 ounces.

So, while I'm working with each loaf, I'm going to cover the other one just so that it doesn't dry out.

We're going to divide each of my halves into thirds.

So what I'm going to do is roll each piece into about a 12-inch log.

And at this stage the dough is really easy to work with.

It feels so nice.

So I'm going to lay those perpendicular to each other so I can make my braid.

Then we're just going to pinch the top together and then starting on the right, I'm going to take this piece and fold it over the center, and then I'll do the same with the left piece.

And I'll just keep going until I have a nice braided bread.

Then I'm going to pinch the bottom... ...and pinch the top.

Then to get it into our loaf pan, you might have to squeeze it a little bit, but, usually it'll fit pretty nicely.

I'm going to put that in.

So, I have my two loaves.

I'm going to cover them with a towel.

I want these to rise for about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half.

So while these are rising, about 45 minutes in, I'm going to turn my oven on to 350 degrees and put my rack in the lower middle position, because we want these to be a little bit lower in the oven when they bake.

It never gets old.

Look at how beautiful these are.

So, when I touch them, you can see they are springing back.

I'm going to put an egg wash on these, so they'll get that beautiful burnished, shiny top.

And just before I put them in the oven, I want to turn the oven down to 325 degrees, so they don't cook too quickly.

Sometimes they look like they're perfectly done and then you cut them open, and they're a little bit raw on the inside.

And you've worked so hard to make these, you don't want that to happen.

So, I say invest in a really good instant read thermometer, and you'll always make sure that your baked goods come out at the right temperature.

So, temp these, make sure they're 185 to 190, and they'll be perfect.

So, I'm going to put these in the oven.

I'm going to space them nicely apart so they have a lot of air circulating when they are baking.

♪ ♪ So, look at these beauties.

These are baked up.

I temped them; these are 185 degrees.

I'm going to let them cool on this rack in the pan for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, I'm going to pull them out of the pan and then I'm going to let them cool for another hour.

The moment has arrived.

The bread is completely cooled, which is what we want, because then it will slice beautifully.

and we're going to just cut into this and see if all of our hard work paid off, which I think it has.

Look at that, how beautiful.

Because we made that water roux, you can see that the crumb is really feathery and light.

Wow.

So this is our olive oil challah with golden raisins.

I think you're going to really love this recipe.

It's light, it's fluffy.

You've learned a new technique by using the water roux.

For this recipe and all the recipes from this season, go to MilkStreetTV.com.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - (speaking Arabic): ♪ ♪ - Recipes and episodes from this season of Milk Street are available at MilkStreetTV.com, along with shopping lists, printer-ready recipes, and step-by-step videos.

Access our content anytime to change the way you cook.

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From Vietnamese chicken salad and tiramisu to easy-stretch pizza dough and Austrian apple strudel, the new Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $29.95, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪