Whelmed but not Overly

So today is the day that I decided that my kitchen doesn't have any counter space. I made pretzels today, which if you don't have counter space to sprawl out on...and I am a sprawler, can be difficult. This is where a creative side comes out to play, "if i sit this here, i wonder if it will stay or fall over" or something like a circus act with tight rope balancing and juggling things, and since I only have one sink...its for lack of a better word, pain in the butt.

The good news is that the pretzels turned out amazing!!! I have already nibbled 2 of them, sooo good!

I got this recipe from a nice blog, the address for that blog is here. She has great pictures if you don't like my pictures....

Lets dive in, shall we?

Sourdough Soft Pretzels

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar (divided)
1 cup hot water
1 1/2 cups starter
2 teaspoons kosher salt (Mine would have turned out better had I used kosher salt I used reg. table salt)
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup bread flour (also I didn't use bread flour, I used all purpose)
1/4 cup baking soda
1 egg (turned out my eggs were bad, so I used melted butter)
Sea or kosher salt, for sprinkling

 Directions

In a bowl dissolve the butter and 1 tablespoon of the sugar in the hot water. 

mix in the starter

add the flour and mix it up well

the dough will be pretty stiff, so to make things better scoop your dough out onto a well floured surface. Start kneading in the bread flour kneading well after each addition. 

Keep kneading until you get a nice smooth stiff dough.

Place in a well oiled bowl and let rise for 2 hours.

Since this is made with sourdough starter, it will not raise a whole lot, so don't worry about that. 

After the 2 hours are up, punch down the dough, and toss back onto the well floured surface and knead a few times. 

Roll it into a log, and cut into 16 pieces or 32 pieces if you want to do smaller pretzels. 

Roll each piece into a long strip and then make into a pretzel shape. 

Bring a pot of water to boil, place the remaining sugar and the Baking Soda in the water (be careful and add the soda slowly because it will make the boiling water foam up, so just add small amounts at a time) 


 Place each pretzel into the pot to poach it for about a minute each. Remove it from water and let drain on a wire rack. They will float when they are close to being done.

While they are draining, heat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit  

Beat the egg (we promise not to call the authorities for you beating it up) and take a pastry brush and brush on the top of the pretzels, this will make them have that nice golden brown color in the oven, sort of like us with tanning oil at the beach, unless you are a freckled fairskin sister like myself...then we burn...so don't burn the pretzels :-) 

 Transfer them to greased baking sheets 

Bake for 15 minutes 

Take out of the oven and enjoy!

These pretzels are great when they are fresh out of the oven but they will also keep for  a week...I have a feeling they wont last that long in our house!