random and spontaneous baking
It seems that instead of delving into a much-needed cleaning spree before we have house-guests this weekend, I decided to make soft pretzels from scratch, for the first time.
I am a cook of neither skill or ease, so I'm not sure exactly why I chose to take this path today, but YUM it was rewarded. I may have also created lots more work for myself (and husband!) now that I've effectively dirtied every dish in the house with my pretzel-making.
The dough part was the easiest... just mix up the ingredients and let them sit around for awhile. The actual rolling of the pretzel part... that was impossible. Not only could I not roll a convincing pretzel shape, but I could barely even roll the dough, period. Something was off, I guess. I had to settle for simple Xs and Os, and even that was physically and mentally demanding. Note the sad, small pretzel pancake (lower left corner, bottom plate) and chicken tender shaped pretzel (right hand side, top plate). Two of the Os did turn out to look impressively bagel-like. At least those are some sort of recognizable bread shape.
But behold-- pretzels!! They taste exactly like the kind you buy for 3 bucks a pop at the mall. Summer pretzel stand, anyone?
posted by sandie at
2:46 PM
6 Comments:
Uh...hello, those are bagels. Anyway...welcome back to the blogosphere (BTW, blogosphere is in the spell checkers lexicon now apparently :/ )
I'd love to have that pretzel recipe. I tried to make soft pretzels earlier this summer and they turned out very, very hard! They were very similar in shape to yours, but almost inedible because they were so incredibly hard. I must admit I did not make my own dough. I used pre-made dough from the store.
Making the dough was incredibly easy w/ this recipe--
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Buttery-Soft-Pretzels/Detail.aspx?prop31=1
I have no idea why it was so hard to roll out, though!
Oh, and then a made a few adjustments to the recipe--
To set the dough, I put it in an oiled metal baking pan in the oven, on the lowest possible setting for an hour (instead of covering and just letting it sit).
After baking I drizzled melted butter over them to give them the true mall taste :)
I'm glad you're back liljeans!
well color me impressed....also - nice post!!
can i make a suggestion for your next cooking post? CHEESE FRIES!
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