Home-made Soft Pretzels

We here at the Nagle household love Wetzel's Pretzels, among other mall pretzels. If you are familiar with these pretzels, however, you know two things: 1) you have to go to the mall to get them and 2) you have to pay a pretty penny for them. Since we're staying away from the mall for all kinds of reasons, we haven't had any pretzels in a while. I was super excited to see this recipe from Mayaluna at MayaMade. The comments were all positive with regard to their own results, so I had to give it a try. I can tell you it was fantastic! We made regular salted pretzels, cinnamon sugar pretzels, pretzel bites, even pizza pretzels and they turned out really, really well.


Soft Pretzels

-makes 12-14 pretzels

Combine:
1 cup of warm water with 2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast and let sit for five minutes

Then add:
1 1/2 cup unbleached flour (I only had all-purpose)
2 tablespoons butter - softened
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon sugar

Mix for three minutes and then add:
1 1/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (I only had all-purpose, so that is what I used)

Knead the dough until it loses its stickiness. Let rise in a covered and oiled bowl until doubled in sized. Punch down and divide 12-14 pieces.

Roll into 18 inch snakes with tapered ends (roughly the diameter of your finger) and mold into traditional pretzel shape or whatever you want.

Place on greased baking sheet and let rise again. Preheat oven to 475.

Bring a pot with 4 cups of water to a boil and add 5 teaspoons of baking soda to the boiling water. Carefully lower the pretzels into the boiling water for one minute or until the pretzel floats. Remove with slotted spoon and place back onto the baking sheet. (Do not use an aluminum pot or spoon for this step!) Sprinkle with coarse salt (not too much - it sticks!)

Bake until golden - about five minutes. Let them cool for a few minutes and then eat them! They are really, really good.