web-log/container/site/content/posts/pretzel-nuggets/index.md

+++ categories = ["food"] tags = ["reverse-engineer","pretzel"] date = 2024-12-26T12:00:00Z description = "Reverse-engineering Auntie Anne's original pretzel nuggets with nutrition calculations, a formulated dough, and a lye bath." draft = false slug = "auntie-annes-pretzel-nuggets" title = "🥨 Auntie Anne's Pretzel Nuggets" author = "nicholas" +++

I am trying to reverse-engineer Auntie Anne's Original Pretzel Nuggets. I will use lye instead of baking soda for my alkaline bath for a deeper brown and classic pretzel taste.

{{< image src="images/pretzel-nuggets-baked.jpg" caption="Baked pretzel nuggets" >}} {{< image src="images/pretzel-nuggets-salted.JPG" caption="Pretzel nuggets - salted" >}} {{< image src="images/pretzel-nuggets-cinnamon-sugar.JPG" caption="Pretzel nuggets - cinnamon" >}}

Reference Material

I am not given an ingredient list on the official Auntie Anne's Pretzels website, but I am given something like a nutrition label for each of their products, which includes the total weight of the product. Since it is a simple bread product, the number of possible ingredients that form the nuggets is very limited, making the missing ingredient list almost unnecessary. I will be able to make good enough guesses and estimates.

Original Pretzel

{{< image src="images/original-pretzel.PNG" caption="Original Pretzel" >}} {{< image src="images/original-pretzel-nutrition.PNG" caption="Original Pretzel nutrition" >}} {{< image src="images/original-pretzel-nutrition-detailed.PNG" caption="Original Pretzel detailed nutrition" >}}

Here is the same table formatted for markdown:

Serving Size	Calories	Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)	Trans Fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium (mg)	Carbohydrate (g)	Fiber (g)	Total Sugars (g)	Added Sugars (g)	Protein (g)
Original Pretzel 1 each (125g)	340	5	3.0	0.00	15	870	65	2	9	8	8

Pretzel Nugget

{{< image src="images/bucket-of-nuggets.PNG" caption="Bucket of Nuggets" >}} {{< image src="images/bucket-of-nuggets-nutrition.PNG" caption="Bucket of Nuggets nutrition" >}} {{< image src="images/nuggets-nutrition-detailed.PNG" caption="Bucket of Nuggets detailed nutrition" >}} Again, recreated using markdown table:

Serving Size	Calories	Fat (g)	Saturated Fat (g)	Trans Fat (g)	Cholesterol (mg)	Sodium (mg)	Carbohydrate (g)	Fiber (g)	Total Sugars (g)	Added Sugars (g)	Protein (g)
Original Nuggets (206 g)	580	12	7.0	0.00	30	1450	105	3	14	14	13

Calculations and Assumptions

I base all of my calculations on the values in the Original Pretzel table.

Dough fat

My first assumption is that very little if any fat is included in the dough, since Auntie Anne's brushes the nuggets with butter after baking. The value given for the amount of fat per one original pretzel is 5 grams, and it is easy to imagine this is the average amount of butter that ends up sticking to the pretzel when dipped. I discount the 5 g fat from the total weight of the pretzel since I am only interested in creating the dough. My dough will contain no fat.

Sugar

This will probably be granulated sugar. The given value of added sugar directly tells me the total weight in the product: It is 6 / 120 or $5$% of the total weight of the finished product.

Protein

Protein content is most likely to be entirely provided by the protein found in wheat flour. Flour can have varying protein content across different types, but I start with the assumption that the flour contains ~ $11$% protein. I use this to calculate about how much flour is present in the dough. 8 \div 0.11 = 73.

Verifying

At first glance, everything seems about right, but I should check. Here I verify that the calculated flour weight and the sugar weight match the given carbohydrate value 65. While I am at it, I may as well verify that I am close to the calories value as well. The tables below shows these calculations. I end up with almost exactly the same macronutrients as given in Auntie Anne's Original Pretzel. Close enough.

Ingredient	Kcal / g	Carbohydrate	Protein	Added Sugar	Fat
All Purpose Bleached Wheat Flour	3.67	0.77	0.11	-	-
Granulated Sugar	4.00	1.00	-	1.00	-
Fat	9.00	-	-	-	1.00

Ingredient	Amount (g)	Calculated Carbohydrates	Calculated Kcal
All Purpose Bleached Wheat Flour	73	0.77 \times 73 = 56	73 \times 3.67 = 268
Granulated Sugar	8	1\times 8 = 8	8 \times 4 = 32
Fat	8	-	5 \times 9 = 45
TOTAL	89	56 + 8 = 64	268 + 32 + 45 = 345

All of the nutritionally significant ingredients I care about are now solved for. I make some assumptions about IDY and salt. Auntie Anne's allows their dough to rise for 30 min. or so. I do not care really. I use 2% yeast and 2% salt (baker's %), which are typical usage levels for most bread products. The last item to calculate is water. To get close, all I need to do is subtract the calculated values from 120. 120 - flour - sugar - fat - salt - yeast = 39 120 - 73 - 8 - 5 - 1.5 - 1.5 = 36 This calculation indicates a very low hydration level of 48%. However, it is likely that this is because the final product weight will obviously not account for moisture loss that occurs throughout the process of baking and cooling. This can be around 10% total. Assuming this is true, I must increase the water weight by 10% (close enough) to arrive at the weight of water that was originally present in the dough before moisture loss. This gives me a much more reasonable hydration level of 55%. Perfect.

Formulation

Using the table above, I am able to create a spreadsheet to calculate values for a batch of pretzel dough. All I need to do is convert the percentage-based formula to a baker's percentage-based formula:

ingredient	baker's %	weight (g)
Bread flour (12.7%)	100.00%	600
water	55.00%	330
IDY	2%	12
salt	2%	12
sugar	11%	66
TOTAL		1050

Process

Any time I try to recreate a sort of industrial process in a home kitchen, I consider whether there might be a more sensible home kitchen-friendly process. When researching how I might process the dough into nuggets, I come across several different methods, some of which I tested, others of which I reasoned were not worth testing on the basis of my failures during other testing procedures. One important factor that varies between procedures is the order of shaping, proofing, and water bath. Some recipes would have me first shape the dough into nuggets, proof, dip, bake. Others: shape into ropes, proof, shape into nuggets, dip. I am nearing the end of the list of sensible order permutations, so one will understand the point I am making: there are many ways is theory to make pretzel nuggets.

After several trials, I conclude that Auntie Anne's has the best procedure. It is by far the most time-efficient and simplest. It works great. It seems counterproductive in retrospect not to start with their own procedure, but the process of eliminating other procedures taught me a lot about why Auntie Anne's does it the way they do, and gives me confidence that this way is the better way. Anyway, Auntie Anne's process, which I have modified for my own kitchen / tools, etc. goes something like this:

1. whisk together dry ingredients
2. add water to mixer
3. add dry ingredients to mixer
4. mix for 8 min.
5. press dough into 13 x 9 pan (to shape uniformly),
6. turn out onto parchment lined cutting board, cover
7. proof 30" @ 70 F
8. using pizza cutter, cut into 9" long strips less than an inch wide (4 halvings)
9. dunk in alkaline bath for ~10 sec.
10. drain on wire mesh 10 sec.
11. transfer to parchment lined sheet pan
12. during handling, allow dough to elongate to fill out most of the length of a 1/2 size sheet pan (~16")
13. sprinkle with kosher or flaky salt
14. cut into 1" pieces with a pizza cutter
15. bake 8 min. @ 500 F
16. separate
17. toss with melted butter

Mistakes to avoid

Grease dough

Greasing the dough will result in streaky, blotchy surface finish. The fat coats the surface of the dough and allows the alkaline bath to unevenly penetrate to the surface. Or something like this. I do not know exactly why but it is a good guess.

Use high hydration dough

Dough is too elastic at 60% hydration. 55% is good.

Shape before proof

Once again I do not know exactly how to explain this. I tried to shape dough into a rope, proof, then dip. This caused my dough to rip apart like wet tissue paper.