Homemade Soft Pretzels

Summer = beers and eats on the patio. Our local bars often have German brews (one of the best!), and pair so well with sausages or pretzels (the bestest!) Needless to say pretzels go so well with beer. Something about the salty chewy ness of a warm pretzel, is just such a treat. Additionally, Preztel is not something one makes at home often. How many times you hear someone baked and they baked pretzel??  well today I'm doing it, so you see, you can do it at home fairly easily.

Pretzel as we know today, is often considered Germanic origins. It's actual origin may be German but also may be Italian dating 610 AD from the monks. Because of the shape and simple ingredient, it's often regarded with some religious significance - looks like little praying hands, and you can withhold eggs and oil so it's lent friendly. Regardless, it's delicious and we're making some today. *

We need:

- 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup lukewarm water (not hot, not cold, WARM!)

- 1 tbsp salt

- 1 tbsp regular white sugar

- 4 1/2 cup flour

- 3 tbsp oil

- 2/3 cup baking soda

- 2 eggs (one egg was enough)

- kosher salt

- 2 1/4 tsp yeast (or 1 packet)

How: **

1) salt, sugar, water, yeast and water go in together in a bowl, mix and let it foam. ***

2) add flour and oil, make it into a dough ball

3) cover and bowl and put it in a warm place (I chose my balcony in the sun) for an hour ish. 

4) oven 450F preheat

5) cut the dough into even # of pieces, you can do 8, I did 12. make dough snakes and form pretzel shapes. This was my favorite part.

6) boil a large pot of water, put in the baking soda and boil each pretzel in it for 20-30 sec each. I had to do them 1 or 2 at a time as I don't have a massive pot, and just waited till they float on top of the water. This is such a weird step to me - I've never boiled raw dough like this before. But apparently a super important step to add that baking soda taste and chewy texture. It also cooks the pretzels halfway, and we'll finish them off in the oven later.

7) brush on egg wash, sprinkle salt and bake for 10-15 min. I also turned on Broil for like a min or two just to get the gold color cuz baby that's what we are going for am I right? I did a few of the salty ones, and a few with cinnamon sugar with sesame. Well let's just say I preferred the salty ones. ****

Here are some additional info, credits (given when due!), and what I learned aka how I eff'd up. Well life isn't perfect, so maybe you won't have to go down the same path as me. But do try if you are brave and fearless, choose your own adventure you free-willed bird you.

*history credit in case you'd like to read more on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretzel

**recipe credit: it works! I've had mixed luck with a variety of tasty recipes, but this one is legit :)  https://tasty.co/recipe/homemade-soft-pretzels 

*** A word on rising of the dough and yeast situation. Rising of the dough yes is absolutely ideal. Sugar yeast and warm water was the magic bit making it happen. Unfortunately my yeast was from a large batch buy and they kind of.. expired. Expiration is about 2 years btw. Yeast is alive organism, so if they died, they don't work as well. Sorry if this is gross. But, the good news is, my dough did not rise much, but eh... it didn't matter! you see my pretzel still turned up fluffy and has a little nice crack on the skin and hella delicious. So meh don't throw out your expired yeast I suppose. 

****The cinnamon sugar ones looked good but had a few issues. They needed wayyyy more sugar than what I was willing to give. yea my health-conscience mind refused to put anything more than a "sprinkle" of sugar. And let's face it, that's is so not enough. Any baker will tell you typically the amount of sugar you put in any baked goods that should be sweet tasting is borderline psychotic, so close your eyes and sugar the heck out of it if you so inclined to try. Also the sugar ones didn't keep well the next day. They got sticky and.. nope.

*****bonus comment, I made 12. that's too many. These guys are quite superb fresh, and quite gross when they are a day old. see my above comment about the cinnamon sugar ones especially. So no don't make 12, half the recipe if you can't finish them all today. But do you really wanna go through all the effort for 6 of these? so... here's your answer. Effort is a 7, not hard but kind of tedious. Worth the result? maybe 5.