A recipe!

We made these quite a while ago, but I really liked them, so as I was going through pictures and came across this, I thought I would post it and share.  My awesome sister in law Shelli gave me this recipe, who got it from a friend.  She made pretzel bites and cinnamon-sugar pretzels with hers and said they were really good, but we just did traditional pretzels. 

Amish Soft Pretzels

Mix: 1 1/2 c. very warm water
1 1/2 TBS yeast
1/2 c. brown sugar
Let sit to soften yeast, then add:
3/4 tsp salt (scant)
4 c. flour

Mix then knead together and let sit for 15 min.  Form pretzels by taking a small piece of dough (size of lemon) and roll into a "rope".  Form into knot and dip into a solution of:

1 1/2 c. hot water
2 TBS soda

Place on GREASED baking sheet and sprinkle with pretzel salt (or you can use Margarita salt or leave plain). Bake at 550 degrees until browned - bakes very fast. WATCH !!  Remove from oven and dip tops in melted butter. May sprinkle with cinnamon sugar at this point if you haven't used salt.

Tips: When you are rolling out the dough, don't flour the counter.  They roll out better if they are just as-is, although no matter what it takes a long time to roll out the stiff dough.  The scale is hard to tell based on my picture (the pretzel is on a small salad plate), but I rolled them out too thick.  Bake them on the middle rack so they aren't too brown on the bottom or top.  Watch them as they cook, once they are an even golden brown they should be about right (if there are light patches, they may be doughy).

ETA: I made these again last week with my young women (church youth group, girls ages 14-15), and it was so fun.  There were only three girls that night, but we ate 10 by ourselves.  We did some regular pretzels with salt, but also the bites and some with cinnamon sugar, and they all turned out yummy.  The dough was also much easier to roll out this time, so it may have been the humidity or yeast when I made them before that caused the dough to be tougher to roll out.  It made about 13 pretzels whole pretzels (12, plus one cut into bites).