Soft Pretzels

Yesterday Bri and I drove to Iowa and our Iowa Adventure commenced! We are visiting his brother at Grinnell and so far it has been really fun! We got the grand college tour, had lunch at a cute deli in downtown Grinnell and then hung out and watched the tv show Suits before driving to Ames for dinner at Hickory Park.  Hickory Park is known for smoking their own meat and I've gotta say, it was not the best place to take my vegetarian boyfriend.  However, the food was pretty great and the dessert selection, something Bri gets excited about, was to die for.  Seriously, I had never seen so many different sundae combinations in my life! I had their Coffee-Fudge sundae, of course.  Everyone else also got sundaes and everything was delicious.  It was a really fun way to start our Iowa experience!

I am also going to take this weekend to update you all on some of the recipes I have been trying out.  A few days ago, I was craving these guys: Soft Pretzels.  I was going to my little brother's baseball game with my family at night and I decided that Soft Pretzels was a perfect little baseball game treat! I whipped up a batch and was pretty pleased with how they turned out.  Also, I used whole wheat flour and tried both salted and cinnamon sugar combinations.  I ended up liking the salted better, as did most of the crowd, and everyone was happy that I brought them pretzels to the game.  Unfortunately, my fun pretzels did nothing to help my brothers team win, but it was still very fun!

Soft Pretzels (adapted from Yammie's Noshery)

 

Ingredients:

2 cups skim milk

1 1/2 tsp active dried yeast

6 tbsp brown sugar

4 tbsp butter, melted

4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsp fine salt

1/3 cup baking soda

3 cups warm water

sea salt

cinnamon sugar

Directions:

1.  Warm the milk in the microwave for 1 1/2 minutes.  Stir in the yeast and let it sit for 3 minutes. Mix in the butter and sugar.  Mix in the flour, 1 cup at a time, and then mix in the salt.  Knead the dough for 10 minutes. Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it with greased plastic wrap.  Let the dough sit in a warm, moist place for about 1 hour.  The dough should double in size. Preheat the oven to 450 and cut the dough into 12-24 pieces. (I did about 24 small pretzels).  

2. To form the pretzel, roll each piece of dough out to be as thin as you can and shape the pretzel the way you want.  

3. Combine the baking soda and warm water in a medium bowl.  Dip each pretzel in the baking soda water and place on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle each pretzel with sea salt or cinnamon sugar. For a stronger cinnamon sugar taste, bake the pretzels first and then dip in butter and then cinnamon sugar. Bake the pretzels for about 7-10 minutes, until golden brown.

Enjoy :)