1 pack RapidRise yeast
2¾ cups bread flour
½ tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar

1 cup warm water
2 tbsp soft butter

5 tsp baking soda

kosher salt

1. in a large mixing bowl, combine yeast, 1½ cups flour, ½ tsp salt, and sugar
2. add warm water and mix well
3. add butter and stir until blended
4. slowly mix in the remaining 1¼ cups of flour, and knead dough until all of the flour is mixed in and dough loses its stickiness.
5. set aside dough, and let it rise until dough reaches approximately double its original size.
6. divide dough into twelve equal pieces.
7. grease and flour a baking sheet. even better, use parchment paper instead and skip the grease and flour.
8. take each piece and swing it around like a mini-jumprope, letting the dough whack the prep surface on the way down. i learned this trick from watching the people at the pretzel place at the outlet mall. their pretzels are greasy and nasty, but they know how to throw the dough around.
9. loop and twist the lengths into pretzel shapes and place them on the baking sheet.
10. preheat oven to 475°, and ready a boiling solution of 4 cups of water, and the 5 tsp of baking soda in a shallow non-aluminum pot (aluminum may react with baking soda).
11. with a plastic spatula, lift each pretzel from the sheet and lower it into the boiling baking soda solution for 15-20 seconds. you can do more than one pretzel at a time, it just depends on how fast you can work.
12. sprinkle the pretzels with kosher salt and bake approximately 7-10 minutes until browned.

 

if you are lucky enough to have a guy around your house who makes beer, these go great with home-brewed belgian beers such as a saisson or a witbier.