German Style Pretzels

 
   Last Saturday my husband and I made pretzels. We mixed the dough in the bread machine but the rest of the recipe was by hand. We weren't prepared for it. The recipe was complicated and seemed to have more steps than the instructions for Julia Child's hard boiled eggs.
    Another unexpected bit of fun was that you have to boil the pretzels before you bake them. Remember that science project we did as kids, the one with the exploding volcano's?
     Take a big pot of boiling water with baking soda in it,  dunk a salt covered pretzel into it and you get a volcano! The pot bubbled over and spilled out onto the stove top and floor.
     Luckily Gypsy knows that the command "Out!" means high tail it out of the kitchen, so no person or dog was hurt in the making of these pretzels.

German Style Pretzels
Preheat oven to 475 degrees

1 1/2 cups Water
1 teaspoon Salt
1 tablespoon Dark Brown Sugar
4 cups bread flour
2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast

     When the dough is mixed, take it out of the bread machine, roll into a 12 inch cylinder, cut into 1 inch sections, roll those out into 16 inch ropes, twist around into pretzel shape (first make a horseshoe, cross the ends and twist, then pull the ends down and through the loops).
Set finished pretzel on tray sprinkled with coarse kosher salt. 

1/2 cup baking soda added to 3 quarts of water, bring to boil, then lower to simmer. (It sounds so simple, yet it was super exciting!)

     Place pretzels in water for 2 minutes or until lightly golden, then set on wire rack over a baking pan. Sprinkle with salt. Let dry for 10 minutes. Put back on baking pans sprinkled with salt and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until brown.

P.S.- They were fun to make and tasted great, so I'd say they were worth the effort. Bon Appetit!