Recipes not to be trusted
"My adult son purchased this book and was making the Soft Pretzel recipe. It was not going together as expected and he asked for my help. I have extensive baking experience including using yeasted doughs. Here are the issues I have found: The first direction has you combining 1/4 TSP of yeast, 1/2 cup water, 2 TBSP brown sugar and 6 TBSP butter and KNEADING for 5 minutes. This is mixing , it is certainly not kneading so it makes me question the expertise of the person that developed this recipe. Next, it has you adding the sea salt and 4 cups of flour to this mixture. 1/2 cup water even with 6 TBSP of melted butter is not enough to hydrate 4 cups of flour. Lastly, 1/4 tsp of yeast is no where near enough to leaven the dough and will certainly not be enough to double the dough volume when the dough rests for an hour. I noticed this book does not list an author which, to me, is a red flag. I know he is suspect of using any recipes in this book and I tend to agree. This was a total waste of money"