Make Your Own Hot Buttered Mall Pretzels and Pretzel Bites

Today was one of those days that I had to "roll with the punches". Nicholas woke up with a fever and a tummy ache last night, and pretty much was up the whole night, off and on. So I only slept an hour or two. So I had this monstrous "to do" list that was quickly pared down so that I could get some more sleep. Which I did.

It's funny how kids make you slow down sometimes, and it turns out to be a good deal. I actually had some nice chats with both my boys, and still got a bunch of work done. I have to get through my lesson planning, as the new school year starts for us in two weeks, and I spend most of the summer happily avoiding paperwork. It was good to get some of that accomplished.

Yesterday I said I would post this recipe, this amazing, yummy, everything-you-hope-it-will-be, recipe. Make these. They aren't even difficult. But they ARE crazy delicious.

Here's what you need:

Dough
2 1/2 cups All-Purpose Flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (or one packet)
7/8 to 1 cup warm water (I used 1 cup)

Topping
1/2 cup warm water
2 tablespoons baking soda
coarse, kosher or pretzel salt
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Put all the dough ingredients in the bucket of your bread machine. Start the machine on the "dough" cycle, but you only need to take it through the knead process. When it stops kneading to rise, you can take the dough out. It will be quite slack, and sticky. (Alternately, if you don't have a bread machine, just knead it for about 10 minutes by hand, or in a kitchen aid for about 5 minutes.

Take the dough out of the bread machine and flour it well, then place it in a bag to rest. (By the way, I thought this was odd. "Place it in a bag to rest"? Sounds like something a mobster would say. But I am a recipe direction follower, so I did it. Let it rest about 30 minutes.

By the way, not only does it sound weird, but it isn't the worlds' best idea- it stuck to the bag. I got most of it off, but next time I would flour the dough a little more, and maybe throw some flour in the bag too. Whatever, it wasn't a big deal.

Divide the dough into 8 pieces and let it rest again for 5 minutes (this time outside the bag, on a floured surface):

Meanwhile, make up the baking soda/water solution. Mix up the warm water and baking soda in a shallow bowl. Make sure the baking soda is dissolved. And preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

Get out your salt. I used this coarse sea salt from the grocery store. I am sure there is "pretzel salt" but that seems like a scam- I'll bet the charge you more because they call it pretzel salt. Coarse salt is coarse salt. I hate when they give things fancy names and then try and rip you off.

Now get out two baking sheets and coat them well with Pam, or cover them with parchment paper or non-stick foil. Now you're ready to make some pretzels!!

Basically you roll each dough ball into a long snake (think back to play-dough fun days and do that!) and shape into pretzels. My snakes were about 24" long. I made 4 large pretzels, then cut the other dough snakes into "pretzel bites"- those were GREAT~

After you shape them, dip them in the baking soda solution, put the on the prepared baking sheet, and sprinkle with salt. I used a bunch of salt, but I like stuff really salty. Use your own judgement.

Here's the bites:

And here are the sheets, ready to go into the oven. Ok, FYI: When the oven is 500 degrees and you lean in to rotate the baking sheets and you have a silver charm on your necklace- THAT CHARM GETS STINKING HOT!!!!!!!

....that is all.

Bake at 500 degrees for 8-9 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through. They should be golden brown. Have 3 Tb melted butter ready with a pastry brush for when they come out of the oven.

Brush all the pretzels with butter until all the butter is used up. Now go find a secret spot and take several pretzels with you. Oh, and bring something to wipe your hands off with. You're gonna need it.

I got this recipe from http://www.kingarthurflour.com/ - they have some AWESOME stuff!!