Before we dive into this recipe, I need to give all the credit in the world to my friend Mason Woodruff. He posted this Greek yogurt biscuit recipe and it’s absolutely incredible. I based this recipe off of his, so I can’t take credit for the original biscuits! Go check out his recipes, because they’re all amazing.
This right here is the recipe you never knew you needed. Flakey, buttery biscuits, plus full pretzel flavor. All of this for only 150 calories and 4g of fat!
These poofed up so much more than I thought they would, and you can taste the flakey layers in every single bite…
I tried a few iterations of these biscuits, so I’ll break everything down for ya to make it all as easy as possible.
The Ingredients
I always recommend sticking with the same ingredients, if possible. But there are some close alternatives you can use if not:
- Self-Rising Flour: Self-rising flour is nothing fancy, it’s just all-purpose flour that has been pre-mixed with salt and baking powder. If you don’t have any, use the same amount of all-purpose flour along with 2 teaspoons baking powder. Something like almond flour won’t worry, but a 1:1 gluten-free flour should work out pretty well.
- Light Butter: I used “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” with Olive Oil. It’s a softened butter spread mixed with olive oil that has 60 calories per tablespoon vs the usual 100 in butter. You can sub it out for full-fat butter, and I’ve also seen people successfully use coconut oil in lots of recipes.
- Sugar Substitute: This recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of granular sugar substitute to sweeten things up a tad and do some sciency things to the biscuits, so don’t leave it out! You can use regular sugar in its place, but I’ve always used Swerve and really like it.
- Pretzel Salt: I looked everywhere for pretzel salt, but it was surprisingly difficult to find. I ended up finding Morton coarse sea salt at my local store, and it worked out perfectly in place of pretzel salt. They’re essentially the same exact thing, so look for some coarse sea salt for topping your pretzel biscuits.
Making the Biscuits
If you’ve made the 2 ingredient bagels before, you know just how easy it is to mix flour & yogurt to create bread. This recipe is slightly different, however, because if you overwork the dough, it’ll be way too dense. Biscuits are supposed to be light and flakey, different than typical bread or bagels, so you need to be careful with the dough. But the steps are still very easy:
Step 1: cut the butter in with a fork. Basically, you want small pieces of butter still left in your dough at the end to melt into the biscuits when they bake.
Step 2: Add in the Greek yogurt and mix until a dough begins to form but there is still flour left.
Step 3: Add to a flat surface and. carefully work the dough with your hands until there is no loose flour left.
Step 4: Form the dough into a rectangle, roughly 1/2″ thick
You can see in my “rectangle” that the dough is still pretty loose- that’s what we want! Traditionally, you would then cut your biscuits out into circles, but we’re going to use a knife to cut square(ish) biscuits instead. Circles are great, but we like easy. When you cut circles out (assuming you have a tool to do so) you’re then left with extra dough that you need to turn into another 1-2 biscuits. Since this is low fat and delicate, we want to work the dough as little as possible.
The reason biscuits are traditionally cut, rather than formed by hand into biscuit shapes, is that cutting will reveal the layers and allow the biscuits to poof up really nicely. You’ll notice that on the edges you don’t cut, they won’t rise quite as much.
Once you cut the biscuits, check out the final result:
Pretzel-tizing the Biscuits
The thing that separates pretzels from regular bread is the baking soda bath. All you do is bring water to a boil, add some baking soda, and let pretzel dough float in that water before baking. Easy as that! But since we’re dealing with a very delicate biscuit dough, we need to switch things up slightly. Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered.
1. I learned very quickly that if you add baking soda directly to boiling water, it’s going to bubble up and overflow very, VERY quickly. If you don’t want a mess on your hands, I recommend putting baking soda in a large bowl, and then adding your boiling water to that. It makes things waaaay easier for you.
2. I tried adding the biscuits to the baking soda bath to let them float, but I didn’t get quite as much rise out of them after baking. Instead, I found that spooning the baking soda water over the biscuit worked out much better. Without floating the biscuit in the water, you don’t get quite as deep of a pretzel flavor, but the rise is significantly more. Check out the difference here, with the full baking soda bath on the left and the spooned version on the right:
This recipe will have you spooning the water over the biscuits to get the result on the right instead! Plus, since the dough is delicate, you don’t need to worry about the dough falling apart in the water.
3. You can turn these into pretzel bites, too! If you do that, you can definitely let them float in the baking soda bath. Just put one pretzel bite on a spoon with holes, lower it into the water for 15-20 seconds, then add to a baking sheet. The beauty of doing these as pretzel bites is that since you are making so many cuts in the dough, all the layers will be revealed beautifully.
Final Notes
These can be enjoyed as-is, but my favorite application is using these for breakfast sandwiches! You can throw these biscuit into the fridge and enjoy throughout the week, but mine only lasted one day. Whoops.
Anddddd, as a bonus, I wanted to try the same baking soda method in this recipe to make a pretzel pizza crust. Sticking with the Mason Woodruff recipe train, his 2-ingredient air fryer pizza is my favorite pizza recipe ever. I made that recipe exactly as-is, but spooned the baking soda water over the crust before baking (and baked in my pizza oven). The result was nothing short of spectacular.
The possibilities are endless.
Speaking of air fryer, your biscuits can definitely be made in the air fryer! Using the oven is just easier so you can fit all 6 biscuits together, but an air fryer will work to get these nice and brown on top. You can try the same temperature as this recipe (375 degrees F) but likely for less time, maybe closer to 15 minutes.
Soft Pretzel Biscuits
Super easy, buttery biscuits made even better (somehow) by pretzel-tizing them!
Ingredients
Ingredients for Biscuits
- 180g (1.5 Cups) Self-Rising Flour
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 150g (2/3 Cup) Plain Nonfat Greek Yogurt
- 56g Light Butter
- 24g (2 Tbsp) Sugar Substitute (I used Swerve)
Ingredients for Baking Soda Bath
- 1/4 cup Baking Soda
- 3 cups Water
Toppings
- Pretzel Salt / Coarse Sea Salt
- 14g (1 Tbsp) Melted Butter
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
- While the oven preheats, mix your dry ingredients (self rising flour, salt, and sugar substitute) together in a large bowl before cutting the butter in with a fork.
- Add the Greek yogurt and mix everything together until a dough begins to form. It’s important to not overmix! We don’t want a dough ball at this point, but we want all the yogurt to be absorbed, so make sure there is still flour left in the bowl.
- Empty the bowl onto a flat surface and carefully form the dough into a rectangle about 1/2″ thick. Remember, we don’t want to overwork the dough or else we wont get those delicious flakey layers.
- Once you have your rectangle, cut the dough into 6 pieces and add to a baking sheet.
- In a small saucepan, bring 2-3 cups of water to a boil. Put 1/4 cup baking soda in a large bowl, and then add your boiling water to create a baking soda bath. It’s going to bubble up a ton but settle down very quickly.
- Spoon some of the baking soda water out of the bowl and right over the tops of your biscuits, and use a brush (or the back of a spoon) to coat the sides of the biscuits as well. Sprinkle salt on top of the biscuits.
- Add to the oven and bake the biscuits for 20 minutes, until the tops are nice and brown. You can get away with a few extra minutes if needed.
- If you want a little extra buttery goodness, melt one tablespoon of butter and immediately brush the tops of the biscuits when they come out of the oven. Wait a few minutes for the butter to absorb, then enjoy!
Nutrition Information
Yield 6 Serving Size 1 BiscuitAmount Per Serving Calories 150Total Fat 4gCarbohydrates 24gProtein 5g
Want to save some calories?
You can use 170g Greek yogurt and 28g light butter (2 tablespoons) to save some calories and get a similar result. I tried both ways and much preferred them the way the recipe is written since they come out fluffier and with more butter flavor, but making this substitution will bring each biscuit to roughly 135 calories each.