My Early Saturday and Pizza Pretzels

Yay!! Its FINALLY the weekend! AND it's only 12:30 and I have already had a pretty great day! How, you may ask... Well, when you wake up at 4:45 in the morning with the random urge to make something delicious, you have a lot more time to enjoy your day. A brief recap of my day thus far: woke up with the desire to create something. Does this ever happen to anyone else? You just wake up and want to get stuff done? Well, I threw some laundry in the wash (sorry neighbors), put the dishes away (dropped one... again sorry neighbors :/), and then decided to see what I could pull together for a good baking session.

My on hand ingredients were somewhat limited as I have been working ALOT this week and haven't done any shopping. So when I remembered seeing a super simple recipe for garlic soft pretzles on the picky palate website I decided to try it out. Apparently I wasn't thinking very clearly because it didn't occur to me that I had no garlic or garlic salt, or canola oil. But, never one to give up easily, I browsed through my spices and settled on my favorite Red Robin seasoning and some rosemary and figured good old vegetable oil would have to work. I worked in some additional changes as I was making them which I will share with you below. In the end, they turned out pretty good, kind of like a pizza pretzel!

After I finished with my baking frenzy, I enjoyed a nice warm pretzel, watched food network for a bit, read my new Martha Stewart and decided to head over to the parents to grab my mom and hit up the Lake Oswego farmers market. My favorite weekend activity! It was great as usual, strawberries are really coming into season as are cherries, and there were lots of yummy samples to be had. After that, we headed over to the Booktique a used bookstore in Lake Oswego. I scored two sweet vintage cookie cookbooks and one AMAZING cookbook from the fifties that I will be sure to share with you all at a later date. From there, we trekked to Whole Foods and finally ended up at the Stash Tea store for some tea sampling. I bought some refreshing Mango Passionfruit iced tea as well. So, all in all a pretty productive Saturday, and it's only half over!

Pizza Pretzels

Adapted from http://www.sugarlaws.com/garlic-soft-pretzels (be sure to check out her pictures, they are really super!)

1 tsp active dry yeast

Pinch of sugar

1/3 cup warm water

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 tbsp white sugar

1 tbsp canola oil

Spices a tu gusto (to your liking)

I used about a teaspoon and a half Red Robin Seasoning, a teaspoon of rosemary, and a dash of pizza seasoning

3 tbsp baking soda

1 cup hot water (as hot as your tap can get)

Cheese for sprinkling

Dissolve yeast into water with a pinch of sugar. Stir it a bit, then let it stand for about 10 minutes or until creamy in color.

In another bowl mix sugar, flour, salt, canola oil (this is where I realized I was missing garlic powder), Red Robin Seasoning Spice, rosemary, and pizza seasoning. Add yeast mixture to flour mixture and knead about 8 minutes.

Put dough in greased bowl in a warm place with a warm towel over the top. Allow to rise until doubled in size, the original recipe says about an hour but mine took about two hours (my apartments pretty cold).

Preheat oven to 425. Divide dough into six parts. Take each part and roll it into a long strand. When finished, pick up each strand, stretch into pretzel shape (mine were not all the same, it takes practice I guess!), and place on a cookie tray lined with parchment paper.

Stir baking soda into hot water until dissolved. Pick up each pretzel and give it a quick dunk before placing it back on the cookie sheet. Here I sprinkled half of my pretzels with cheese, I only did half because I was worried the cheese would burn so I wanted to leave some of the pretzels au natural to see how they turned out in comparison.

Turns out the cheese is a yummy addition, I highly recommend it! Bake for about 8 minutes, until pretzels are lightly browned.

After cooking, I found a jar of marinara sauce in my fridge and dunked the cheesy pretzels in marinara. It was a great (although a little strange for breakfast), combination.

I think next time I make these I may add a bit of whole wheat flour and maybe do a sweet topping, or parmesan cheese like Auntie Annies, or sesame seeds!

The possibilities are endless!

Have a great weekend!