Hello!
The other day I made homemade pretzels with my sister, Ro!
I have been getting into looking at baking recipes and stuff online and wanting to do some more baking. I’ve especially been enjoying Sally’s Baking Addiction! This was partly fueled when, over Easter, our grandparents so generously gifted us their Stand Mixer!! We had been wanting one and we were so excited to start using it! Like I said, I have been looking at different recipes and I came up with some I wanted to do last week, all from Sally’s Baking Addiction.
I made the dough for some homemade artisan bread a couple days before, so I had started doing stuff with yeast but I did not use the mixer for that recipe.
The pretzels turned out really yummy! They were fun and easy to make. We loved getting to use the Stand Mixer!! We made the dough and then were supposed to knead it which we really struggled with because it was not getting to the point where it passed the “tests”. The tests being where you poke it and it comes back up and without sticking, and also the windowpane where you stretch out a bit of dough and see if light can pass through it without it tearing. We kneaded the dough for a while, first with our hands and then in the mixer and it still wasn’t working. We let it rest, and I looked online and figured we probably over kneaded it. I did a bit more with it. I had checked it and when I checked it again later I think it got slightly better but we decided to move on.
We shaped them into their pretzel shapes, did the baking soda bath which was fun and baked them. I was surprised with how much they puffed up after the baking soda bath and being cooked- they seemed small when we rolled them out but it was nice that they grew so much!
I also ended up making a cheese sauce from Sally’s Baking Addiction which was great with them!
Here’s the links to the pretzels and the cheese sauce from Sally’s Baking Addiction:
Easy Homemade Soft Pretzels
Spicy Nacho Cheese Sauce
What’s something you liked about it (and why)? I liked getting to use our new Stand Mixer, and I also liked how the pretzels turned out! I only had one that was not as chunky so I’m not sure how they all compare and I can’t remember how crunchy mine was. But it had good flavor and was nice and soft on the inside! The cheese was super good with it too.
What’s something you disliked about it (and why)? We definitely had a hard time with the kneading. We should have gotten some of the ingredients measured and prepped before we let the yeast sit in the water- it was sitting in the water and also with the other ingredients for too long, partly because we had to let the melted butter cool partly. So that may have messed it up. Otherwise I’m not exactly sure how to fix that- maybe just kneading it harder and faster. I wish I would have been more kind to Ro when we were doing it and also to Ben when he was trying to get pictures and videos of us and the Stand Mixer.
What was your biggest takeaway or lesson? That I need to be kinder to Ben and Ro, and also seeing how yeast dough making is tricky and they aren’t always going to come out great. These specific pretzels turned out fine but remembering that for the future- it’s not super fun when it doesn’t turn out great every time. I have very little knowledge and have had very little experience so far though so I need some more of both!
What is something you’re curious to learn more about as a result of this experience? I’m excited to do some more baking and do more with yeast. It seems like yeast projects don’t always turn out well and it’s hard to perfect. But I’m excited to try some more and in general make more in our Stand Mixer!
