It's Game Time!

In honor of the big 49iner championship game today, I decided to try making soft pretzels for Brad to take to the tailgate.  I found an amazing recipe of Alton Brown's and it was quite simple. The only thing I did not have on hand is active dry yeast - but that gave me an excuse to take the girls in the double bob for a walk to Target to pick some up.

The dough needed to double in size over almost an hour, so I made the dough earlier in the evening and rolling, shaping, boiling, salting and baking the pretzels were an after dinner activity (and post bed-time for Audrey).  It was the first time I used the dough hook attachment on my Kitchenaid mixer (in almost 8 years, yikes!), so I was excited to branch out.

Amelia had such a fun time rolling out the dough.  I had the great idea that she could roll out her own pretzel and we could put it in the shape of the letter "A" or whatever fun shape she wanted.  We quickly learned that rolling out the pretzel dough into multiple 24" lengths took a bit more effort than anticipated, so Amelia's pretzel became "Tick Tock Crock" of Peter Pan - she is really into Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and Jake and the Neverland Pirates right now.  Tick Tock Crock never made it into the oven (I think it would have been too thick to cook through before it burned outside), but we were able to make seven huge pretzels.  Yum Yum.  Go Niners!

 Ready to be boiled!

Roll Roll Roll

 Tick Tock Crock

The finished product!  Where's the mustard?