Homemade Soft Pretzels with Sierra Nevada Beer Cheese

Sierra Nevada Brewery in Chico, CA is one of my favorite breweries and restaurant, with the best beer cheese and pretzels EVER!! Since I do not get to go to this brewery enough, I decided to take a stab at the beer cheese recipe myself! Ryan came down to visit for my birthday, so he was kind enough to bring down the "Porter Dijon Mustard" straight from Sierra Nevada Brewery.

First, I'll start with the pretzels.  We used the "Almost Famous Pretzel Recipe" from foodnetwork.com.

 Ingredients

For the pretzels:
1 cup milk
1 package active dry yeast
3 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for greasing
1 teaspoon fine salt
1/3 cup baking soda
2 tablespoons coarse salt

Directions

Make the pretzels: Warm the milk in a saucepan until it's about 110 degrees; pour into a medium bowl and sprinkle in the yeast. Let the yeast soften, about 2 minutes; stir in the brown sugar and 1 cup flour with a wooden spoon. Dice 2 tablespoons butter and soften; stir into the mix. Add the remaining 1 1/4 cups flour and the fine salt to make a sticky dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead, adding more flour if needed, until smooth but still slightly tacky, about 5 minutes. Shape into a ball, place in a lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise in a warm spot until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Finished dough before rising

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and grease a large baking sheet. Punch the dough to deflate it, then turn out onto a lightly floured surface. (If the dough seems tight, cover and let rest until it relaxes.) Divide the dough into 6 pieces. Roll and stretch each piece with the palms of your hands into a 30-inch rope, holding the ends and slapping the middle of the rope on the counter as you stretch. Form each rope into a pretzel shape.

We did not stretch out the stated "30 inches" of dough, so our pretzels came out a little thicker than desired.  If I were to make these again, I would take the time to roll our the dough thinner and longer before creating the pretzel shape.

Dissolve the baking soda in 3 cups warm water in a shallow baking dish. Gently dip each pretzel in the soda solution, then arrange on the prepared baking sheet and sprinkle with the coarse salt. 

Pretzel after dipped in baking soda and salted

Bake until golden, 10 to 12 minutes.

Recipe courtesy Food Network Magazine
© 2014 Television Food Network, G.P. All Rights Reserved.

For the beer cheese we used the "Sierra Nevada Beer Cheese" recipe from BevMo's website.

Torpedo® Extra IPA Beer Cheese 
from Sierra Nevada Head Chef Micheal Iles

6 oz. Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA
1/2 pound aged farmstead white cheddar, diced (I was unable to find this cheese so I used "Unexpected Cheddar Cheese with a hint of Parmesan" from Trader Joes)
1/2 pound cream cheese
2 Tbsp. Sierra Nevada® Porter mustard or Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp. finely chopped garlic
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Ryan dicing the cheese

Using a food processor, pulse the cheddar until pea-sized. Add all remaining ingredients except Torpedo. Resume pulsing until all ingredients are well mixed. While the processor runs, slowly add Torpedo until the mixture is a smooth puree.

Pour cheese into a baking dish and place in the oven for 12-15 minutes until golden brown.  Serve with warm pretzels.

We ended up leaving it in the oven for about 30 minutes due to the depth of the corning ware we used, and broiled it for a couple of minutes to brown the top.

It did come out verrrrrry close to the original! We could taste a very slight difference due to the cheese we used, however it was very tasty and similar to Sierra Nevada's recipe.

RATING: