Superbowl pretzel experiment

I know the Superbowl has come and gone, but yesterday I made soft pretzel balls for the game at the fraternity. They were gone in about 10 minutes, and they're super tasty with Dijon mustard.

I combined two recipes, one from Alton Brown at the Food Network and the other from Maria at Two Peas and Their Pod. I had no idea what I was doing, but I jumped in headfirst. Pretzels are delicious and I was excited! Luckily the recipe is a bit hurry-up-and-wait, so I had lots of time to review the instructions. This is the first time I've boiled something before baking it, and I have to admit it was pretty epic to stand over a vat (okay, a pot) of boiling water with massive amounts of steam coming off of it like the wizard in Fantasia. (I have a very active imagination. It's great fun.)

First step was mixing sugar, salt, and yeast in a bowl with warm water. This is familiar territory for me: The sugar is to feed the yeast, the salt impairs its growth a little, and the water wakes it up. I've killed yeast before, so I'm always very careful.

Very careful.

The water was a little warm at 120 degrees Farenheit, so I let it cool for about a minute so the water didn't kill the yeast. I let it sit for about five minutes until the yeast woke up and started bubbling up little bits of oxygen, like so:

It also smells a little like feet. Hooray, it's ready!

I mixed in the flour with a dough hook and my standing mixer and kneaded it briefly until it was smooth and satiny. I rolled it in olive oil then left it to rise for an hour.

It's like magic. Or science. (It's science.)

Once it rose, I split the dough into 8 balls and rolled each one out into a snake. At first I tried to make them into pretzel shapes, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how to do that, so I just cut them into little bite-size pieces.

And then, things got weird. These little bits were boiled in water and baking soda for about 30 seconds, then plopped them down on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. The baking soda got everywhere as I was transferring, but hey, it's a cleaning agent, so it's all safe and good for the kitchen and the pot. The boiling changed the color of the dough, and I think it helps pre-cook the inside of the pretzels so you can bake them without making the crust hard.

Then I took an egg wash (one egg and a tablespoon of water), brushed the top of the pretzel bites and then sprinkled them with salt. The first batch I foolishly used plain salt and they tasted caustic. Second batch? Perfectly seasoned because I used coarse Kosher salt. The salted bites baked for 12 minutes.

Left is baked, right is unbaked but boiled.

Results? Next time I'm going to let them bake a little longer — I was concerned I was going to overbake them and get rock-hard dough balls. Next time I also want to get the water to more of a rolling boil, so I might use a smaller pan — or even a pot — to boil the pretzels in. And of course, next time I'll start out using coarse salt.

There definitely will be a next-time: These were absolutely delicious! I love trying new recipes, and even if I didn't quite nail this one, I think I learned a valuable lesson (again) about following directions properly the first time I make something.

BONUS: Okay, so I love LEGO and Lord of the Rings, and maybe I've gotten carried away, but the company recently released posters with all the characters, and someone snapped an illicit shot of the sets that will be released sometime in the summer — hopefully before my birthday!