As requested pretzels

Hello everyone

Today's post for Food Friday was requested by my darling daughter - Pretzels, ok I thought that can't be too difficult, well now I revise that statement, these are a bit of a bother to tell you the truth. Well really only the end stage to be honest, the rest is just your normal, run of the mill, baking bread experience.

Since this was a new dish for me, I decided to go it alone and follow the recipe as it was written instead of dumping it all in the trusty bread maker, and some days it is quite therapeutic to knead. As I watched the yeast grow in its sugary warm water solution I began to think I should have used a large cup, but it just did. In 10 minutes I had a lovely bubbling mass.  This was added to the dry ingredients with a tablespoon and a half of veg oil and the mixing began.

I mixed the dough with a knife to start as I can't really be bothered with getting my fingers glued together with sticky stuff, but it gets to a stage when you just have to get your hands in there.

10 minutes kneading and job's a good'un

One hour's rising under a bowl on the work surface, well that's not quite true after an hour I didn't think it had risen enough and in fact I was in middle of something else so it was in fact about two hours, the kitchen was fairly cold too.

Divide up into 12 equal ish balls, and then I started the fun and games.  Have you ever tried to roll out a pizza, it keeps springing back on itself like an elastic band well these were just the same. In the end I decided to do batches so I could see how they progressed and learn from my mistakes, aren't I getting better?

Nice but not what it is supposed to look like.  Not anticipating the rising factor, the first batch became more like baps than anything else.

Now I had a little bit of a problem with the phone at this point and the before photo of this batch got lost into the ether.  Having made one batch badly I realised that this little lot needed to be much thinner before baking and so I rolled for much longer putting a real bit of effort into it.  Had I done some more I feel that I may have actually got the hang of it and ended up with something that looked like it should, but to be honest I really couldn't be bothered and time was ticking away, so I bundled all the remaining dough up and made it into a loaf shape,  it's bread it will be fine. I just cooked it for longer, strangely I put it in the oven in the shape of an Irish soda bread and it came out looking like the thing below, but taste wise, it's good.

So overall effort verses time I don't really think I'd bother again. Nice enough if you have the afternoon to play.  

Well more next week, till then take care

ally x