PRETZEL BREAD

Welcome to my first "how-to" post.  Pretzel bread is something my family really enjoys.  It's also not that hard to make.  If you are already making bread, it's just the added step of putting your ball of dough into boiling water that has baking soda added to it.  The ingredients are simple and easily kept on hand.

Yeast, butter, flour, baking soda, brown sugar, and milk

Hold off on the butter and baking soda.  You're going to start by combining a cup of flour (mine is all purpose), 2 1/4 tsp of yeast, 1 cup of warm water, 2 tbsp of milk, and one tbsp of brown sugar.

The ingredients just hanging out waiting to be mixed.

Mix it well for about three minutes until it looks like thin cake batter.  Then, slowly add  1 1/2 to 2 cups of flour until the dough comes together like cookie dough.  At this point, I switch from my batter beater to my dough hook.  If you're working it by hand, then you would turn it out onto a floured surface and knead by hand.  Either way, you're going to continue adding small amounts of flour (1/2 to 1 cup) until you get a clean ball of dough.

The dough needs to rise in a warm place for an hour.  Wet a small hand towel with hot water ( as hot as you can stand), place it over the bowl and let it sit.  In an hour it'll be ready to punch down and work into smaller balls of dough that will become your pretzel bread rolls.

From this point, it's easier to show and tell with video rather than talking you through...

Just to recap - the dough balls take a thirty second soak (flip them midway) in the boiling baking soda water.  Lift with a slotted spoon to drain and place onto a greased baking sheet.  Bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 20 - 25 minutes.  If desired, melt 2 tbsp of butter to brush over the tops of your rolls.

So that's it.  Pretzel bread rolls in the making. We like it best fresh out of the oven with BBQ chicken or pork as sandwiches.  I have to say ( a small disclaimer), yes I know the end shot was lame.  My apologies.  Dinner was well past due and I could barely record the shot before they were devoured.