Adventures In Soft Pretzel Making!

I can’t even remember the last time I baked something from scratch! I love to cook but I guess I’m lazy because I’m always using mixes. I sort of impulsively decided that I would try to make soft pretzels because I already had everything I needed. I’ve been wanting to make bread recently and was curious how hard it would be to knead the dough by hand. Every recipe I see suggests that you need to use a stand mixer and I don’t have one! So this was just an experiment I guess, to see how hard it would be. In case you want to give it a try, this is the recipe I used.

So much flour! Waiting for the yeast to dissolve/activate.

At this point, I had no idea how I was ever going to turn this floury mess into dough. It just wasn’t mixing! After I took this picture, I gave up on the spoon and used my hands to mix it and it was totally necessary!

Somehow, after lots of kneading, it turned into a perfect little dough ball! yay!

And about an hour later, it grew!

This might have been the most time consuming part. The dough doesn’t really stretch when rolled so instead, I had to squeeze and pull to lengthen it. And I feel like a dork admitting this, but when I finally had my first one ready to lay out, I was like, “wait… how does a pretzel go?” while creating several shapes that didn’t look quite pretzel like! haha! :P

Baking time is probably the fastest part of the whole process! Only 8 minutes! I was so stoked when my kitchen started smelling like a Wetzel’s Pretzels in the mall! That was when I knew I did something right! :D

The only ingredient I didn’t have? Kosher salt! So I improvised! :P

They’re tasty! They’re even a little sweet due to the 1/2 cup of sugar! Looking back, I guess it wasn’t really that much work to knead it by hand. It was a pretty time consuming process though. I wish I had kept track of how long everything took. I swear I started around 2pm and I was finally able to eat one (fresh from the oven! the best!) at around 6pm. I’m not sure if I would make them again, just because it’s a lot of work for only a dozen pretzels.