Foodie Friday.

Austin Huston
Sep 11, 2015
4 min read

Foodie Friday. This is going to be a reoccuring event.

Here is something you should know about me, I love gifts. I love receiving gifts, but i especially love giving gifts. This is part of the reason why the Year of No Spending is such a challenge for me. Giving gifts is how I show love (my giving "love language," if you will). I will be at the store, see something [fill in the blank person] would love, and either buy it for said person... or have to fight the urge to do so.

Another thing I love to do is bake. I cook for M & I, but I really just do it because I have to. Not really because I like it.

Baking is different, I bake because I adore it.

So here is how these two aspects of my life collide: baking has become one of my most prominent giving love languages.

I started giving away baked goods first, because it kept them out of my house, and therefore out of my mouth (and off of my thighs). In time, though it has turned into a fun way to brighten someone's day. Not to mention, it is a win-win for me, I get to express my creativity through baking---and I get to bless someone through it.

As of late I have designated myself "official bible study baker." No better group of people to test my sweet & salty baked goods on than a group of women.

This week, I had my friend Nikki helping, and she wanted Soft Pretzels.

Nikki is my most adventurous friend. She is headed to Cambodia for the next 2-3 months & baking has been our favorite way to bond over the past couple of weeks before she leaves. And let me tell you, we make a good team.

After searching Pinterest for the best Soft Pretzel recipe I could find, we found this recipe from Sprinkle Some Sugar.

Here is something else you should know about my baking, I pretty much always follow the recipe of the truly great bakers, word. for. word. So when I share recipes with you, I will really just be linking you over to the great baking blogs... Maybe eventually I will be able to come up with my own awesome recipes. Until then, I will be bragging that [fill in the blank] are so good... Because it isn't even my recipe.

So here it is, how to make Homemade Soft Pretzels that are even better than Auntie Anne's.

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Makes: 8 soft pretzels (we doubled the batch)

Ingredients:

2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (1 standard packet)

1 cup warm water

1 tbs unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

3 cups all-purpose flour + up to 3/4 cup more if needed

2 cups water

4 tbs baking soda

1 tbs coarse salt, for sprinkling on top

6 tbs salted butter, melted

Instructions:

-Preheat oven to 475 degrees and line a large baking sheet or two baking sheets with parchment paper.

-Combine yeast with warm water and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with hook attachment. Once mixture becomes "frothy" your yeast is ready.

-Stir in salt and melted butter.

-Add flour 1 cup at a time until a dough forms and is no longer sticky. You may need more or less depending on temperature differences. If you press your finger into the dough and it bounces back, it's ready to knead.

-Knead dough for 5 more minutes until smooth and pliable. Form dough into a ball and place it back into the bowl to rest for 15 minutes.

-During this time, prepare baking soda bath.

-In a medium sized pot, boil 2 cups of water with 6 tbs of baking soda. Once the baking soda is mostly dissolved, take mixture off heat and allow it to come down to a lukewarm temperature (didn't take long). Pour into a baking dish.

-At this time, 15 minutes of dough resting time should be up. Take dough out of the bowl and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand. Cut dough into 8 sections (like a pizza). Since we doubled the batch, we broke this into two sections and then cut each section into the 8 sections.

-Roll each triangle into a long rope, about 19-20 inches long.

-Shape dough into pretzel shape and place in baking soda bath for 2 minutes. If the whole pretzel isn't covered by the water, spoon it on top of the areas is doesn't reach. Once the 2 minutes is up, carefully pick pretzel up either by your hand or with the help of a fork and place on prepared baking sheet. You may have to re-shape slightly.

-Bake pretzels for 8-9 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately from the oven, brush (heavily) with melted butter (really though, no amount of butter is too much).

-Sprinkle with course salt

Eat as soon as possible! Fresh out of the oven homemade pretzels trump any other kind of pretzel.