Soft pretzel recipe

I got this recipe from one of my good friends. I have made some of my own changes that I will add as well.

1 1/4 C very warm water
1 T plus 1/4 t yeast
3 3/4 C all purpose flour (I use 2 C white and 1 3/4 C whole wheat.)
3/4 C plus 2 T powdered sugar
1 1/2 t salt
2 t veg. oil (I used 6 t flax seed meal)
1/4 C melted butter
kosher salt

Bath: 4 C warm water and 1/2 C baking soda

Cinnamon sugar topping: 1/2 C sugar and 2 t cinnamon

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Mix flour, sugar, and salt. Add oil to yeast and water...blend into dry ingredients. Knead 5 minutes until smooth. Let rise for 45 min. in warm place. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Divide dough into 8 equal portions. Roll out to 3 feet long. Shape pretzels. Dip in baking soda bath. Blot on paper towel to remove excess water. Place on greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt, if desired. Bake 4-5 min. then rotate baking sheet and bake another 4-5 minutes. Cool 2 min. Brush with melted butter and then dip in cinnamon sugar mixture.

Note: Substituting with the flax seed meal can cause the product to brown faster. With my oven I ended up baking for 4 min, rotate , then 4 more minutes. Also, the flax seed meal can be a substitution for oil, butter, or margarine in your future recipes. It does have to be used in a 3 to 1 ratio tho. So, in the above recipe you can see that I used 6 t flax seed meal instead of the 2 t oil.

I also do not shape into pretzels because that serving is too large for my kids. I just rolled the dough into the snakes and then cut it into little sticks The serving size is smaller and they are easier to manage for the kids.

This last time I made them I actually froze some of the chunks of dough. The idea being that I can just pull out a couple pieces when we want to make them. I will let you know how that goes!

Happy eating!

Update: The frozen chunks of dough thawed out really nicely. It took about 3 hrs for them to thaw to a nice pliable state. For each chunk I seem to be getting appx. 10 pretzel stick.