Pretzel recipe

Ever had those days where it totally feels like everything in the kitchen hates you???  That was totally my day the other day... From the moment I went into the kitchen, I just knew it. I was like well I'm going to do this. That same day I also made orange chicken. Now let me tell you I have a battle with orange chicken. I made it once before and it was a great disaster. So, I decided I didn't wanna give up. So the other day I made it again. Trying my best to come up with a magical orange chicken. Yeah not so much haha. When I started the orange chicken in the crock pot, I knew just knew it wasn't gonna turn out right. But I still had faith (errr lack of faith) that it'd turn out okay.. That was the first disaster....

Secondly, I LOVE LOVE soft pretzels, but can't always get them!!! So, as I usually do I try to make the junk food snack items I love, so I can of course have them whenever I want them. So I hunted up a soft pretzel recipe. I found one that looked easy enough. So given my orange chicken disaster I thought I'd give it a go and make the soft pretzels.  First batch of dough went horrible wrong. Which I then decided to tell you all I wanted to hide and eat peanut butter cups. LOL I gave it another try....

So I took the recipe Soft pretzels, and I changed it a bit. I give all credit to the original recipe here...


For the dough:
1½ cups warm water (110-115° F)
1 tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. Sea Salt (but you can use regular)
2¼ tsp dry.Active Yeast
 4 1/4 all-purpose flour
4 tbsp. salted butter, melted
Vegetable oil, for greasing the bowl

For finishing:
Cooking spray
10 cups water
2/3 cup baking soda
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tbsp. water
I used Course sea salt to sprinkle on top

Directions:
To make the dough, combine the water, with yeast and 1 TB of sugar..Let it sit for 5 minutes till foamy. Then I add salt.  Mix on low speed to dissolve the yeast.  Add in the flour and melted butter and mix just until the dough comes together. This is a very thick dough so watch out.   Switch to the dough hook and knead on medium speed until the dough is smooth and clears the sides of the bowl, about 5 minutes.  Transfer the dough to a bowl lightly greased with vegetable oil, turning once to coat.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place, about 50-55 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 450° F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and spray lightly with cooking spray.  Bring the water and baking soda to a boil in a large saucepan or stockpot. Take your dough and form it into a pretzel design. You can look at the above link for directions on how. Then boil each pretzel 3 seconds on each side. Brush with your egg wash. Sprinkle with salt and bake. Bake at 350 till golden brown.

To do a Pretzel dog, wrap pretzel dough around a hot dog and boil it. Sprinkle with salt and bake.

To do a cinnamon twist, take to this pretzel dough ropes and twist it. Brush with egg wash and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.