P is for Pretzels for The Kids Cook Monday

Winter is well and truly here in this part of the world.  While we don't get cold enough for snow (much to Bear and Bee's disappointment) it is still the perfect weather for soups and stews.  And what better to go with a bowl of steaming soup than warm, buttery homemade pretzels?

The original recipe for these pretzels is from Averie Cooks, a fantastic food blog that I have recently found.  We basically followed this recipe with only a few minor changes.  The pretzel dough was made in our bread maker (on the pizza dough setting which takes 50 minutes) so the recipe took a little longer than an hour.  Also we weren't worried about it being vegan so we used regular butter.  And as the ingredients are listed in American cup and spoon measures we converted the flour, water and butter measurements to Australian metric measures.  American teaspoons are equivalent to Australian teaspoons so the measurements for the yeast, sugar and salt remained the same.

I have listed the ingredients here in Australian measurements along with basic instructions for ease of use.  Make sure you visit the Averie Cooks blog for the full instructions on how to make these delicious pretzels.  They are certainly worth the effort (if you can call placing ingredients in a bread maker, rolling and shaping dough and baking in the oven effort!) and would be great as a snack on a wintry afternoon or as we had them, delicious with Homemade Chicken Soup.

Our pretzels were a lot smaller too than the ones from original recipe.  The Averie Cooks recipe made 6 large pretzels whereas ours made 18 small pretzels.

Soft Buttery Pretzels
Ingredients
313 grams bread flour
2 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
scant 1/4 teaspoon salt
237 ml lukewarm water
57 grams butter, melted
coarse salt for sprinkling

Directions
1. Prepare the dough using a bread maker or a stand mixer.

2. Divide the dough into 6 even sized pieces. Divide these pieces into 3 and then roll into long thin sausage shapes.  Ours were about 25cm long and 1cm thick.

 3. Twist the dough sausages into pretzel shapes.  Or in our case snakes, cookies and various other shapes.

4. Brush with some of the melted butter and bake for 6 to 7 minutes in a 200 degrees Celsius oven.
5. Brown under a grill for 1 to 2 minutes.

6. Brush with the remaining melted butter and sprinkle with the coarse salt.

Yummo!  These were a big hit with Bear and Bee (and of course hubby and me!). Definitely going on the regular menu plan.