Snow Day Pretzels

Today was a rare occurrence - our school was closed. Out of boredom, I shuffled through and organized a pile of recipes I have printed & clipped but never had a chance to try. During the shuffle, I opened another link on-line and found yet another recipe - I stopped what I was doing and made these pretzels - they were terrific.

Snow Day Pretzels:

Makes 6 large pretzels

1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2-3 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm milk (approximately 110 degrees)

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and mix together until it forms a ball. Start with 2 cups flour and mix it together until it forms something like a thick batter, then, add more flour a handfull at a time until it'll form a nice ball. I used my Kitchen Aid stand mixer but you can knead it by hand. Knead for 5 - 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and satiny.
2. At this point, preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Also, put a medium saucepan 3/4 full with water on to boil.
3. Cover the ball of dough with a towel and allow to rest 5-10 minutes.
   
4. Cut the dough into 6 pieces and shape each piece into a short log. Cover with a towel and let the dough relax for 5 to 10 minutes.
5. Once it has relaxed, roll it out and stretch it out. Let it relax again for another 5-10 minutes
6. Now, stretch the dough out until it is approximately 15 - 20 inches long and about as big around as your index finger. The dough will nearly double in size as it bakes so it is no problem if the dough is quite thin.
7. Shape the dough into a pretzel. Shaping is quite easy. Place a rope of dough on the work surface in front of you. Take each end in a hand, loop the dough away from you, and bring the ends back toward your stomach, crossing them about an inch above the rope. Apply a little bit of pressure to make the loops stick together, but not too much because you don't want then to flatten out.
8. To boil them: If you want to boil them, bring a pot of water to a boil. Dunk each of the pretzels into the boiling water for 5 seconds, then place them onto a baking sheet and sprinkle with coarse salt (I use the kosher stuff that is easy to find at the grocery store) or other toppings. I left the prezel shape on my spatula and dipped it in the boiling water.
9. Place the baking sheets into the oven. It took around 15 minutes for my pretzels to get golden and brown. Remove from the oven and eat immediately.
10. After baking, I spritzed the pretzels with a little water and sprinkled some sour cream and onion topping over the pretzels - they were good with and without the topping.

(I'll post the sour cream and onion topping in another post)