Homemade Soft Pretzels

Austin has had a terrific cold snap with temps dropping to 26 degrees- quite unusual for the area and most welcomed by me. I LOVE cold weather. So I was rooting around in the icebox looking for things to cook with when I discovered some bagel dough tucked away in the back. The Hubs has been on a pretzel and Gulden's mustard kick lately, so I thought perhaps the bagel dough would make tasty soft pretzels. Admittedly they kind of lost their shape when they baked, but that didn't affect their taste! Sadly I can no longer eat wheat, but they received two thumbs up from the Hubs and he suggested we post them as another great use for our homemade bagel dough.

I defrosted the dough in a bowl covered with plastic wrap until they doubled in size, about 2.5 hours. Once defrosted,  I put a large pot of water to boil on the stove and added 2 tbs malt syrup. You could sub honey and 2 tbs baking soda.

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

I rolled out a ball of dough into a long strip- about 15 inches, twisted into a pretzel shape and then lowered in the boiling water about 30 seconds...

I removed with a slotted spoon to a baking sheet covered with buttered parchment paper, brushed with egg yolk and sprinkled some Maldon sea salt on them...

Then I popped them in the oven for about 15 minutes until golden brown and served them to my sweetie with some Gulden's mustard. He said they were warm and chewy and he's never buying frozen Super Pretzels again. What impressed me the most is that the dough has been in the ice box for over a year and held up beautifully! Well worth the hassle. I better go make him some dough and some gluten free dough for me to see how that turns out. Stay tuned...

Bagel Pretzels.... Yes.