Homemade Pretzel Bites

It was in fact a happy Saturday to meeeeee this past weekend! My darling Jen stayed over on Friday night and on Saturday morning I woke up and wanted nothing more than to make some homemade pretzel bites. Who knows why I get these strange cravings but once they hit, they don't disappear!

So I took a little browse through my bookmarked recipes (my goodness, there are A LOT of recipes. It may be time to start printing them off!) and I managed to find a few recipes. Originally, I was going to use one that looked good but it required the pretzel bites to be both boiled and then baked. Frankly, it seemed a little complicated for bites of pretzel dough. Then I came across a second recipe that I'd bookmarked and I knew I'd found the right one.

This recipe was from Mel's Kitchen Cafe and the recipe was so straightforward and easy that you can't help but want to make these delicious bites of the Gods on a daily basis! The pretzels come out with a crisp crust but are so supple in the middle that  you can't help but feel that you've died and gone to pretzel heaven.

The process is quite simple:

Toss all ingredients in the bowl of your mixer fitted with the dough hook. After about 5 minutes of mixing you will have a lovely smooth dough that needs to do a bit of relaxing. I put mine in a bowl greased with olive oil and let it rest for an hour. It rose quite a bit when the hour was up and I proceeded to turn the dough out on to my trusty granite slab that I greased slightly. 

I LOVE DOUGH!

The dough is then divided into 4 pieces and rolled into logs (I love my new dough cutter)

Each log is then cut into 6-8 pieces. Next time I make this, I will make each log cut 12-14 pieces because these were HUGE!

Little bites resting before going in the oven. They have been dipped in a water/baking soda mix & then sprinkled with salt

Lovely pink Himalayan sea salt. Do not be afraid of the 500F temperature that you'll have to set your oven to.

Look at what popped out of the oven!

A close-up!

I served them with a spicy tomato sauce! Look at all of the layers inside the dough!

All in all, I will be making these again and soon at that! I'm thinking they will be making an appearance at our family's Christmas party in a month's time. Like I said, I will probably make them smaller because they do grow even more when they're resting prior to baking.

I hope you all are having a great week thus far!

Keep smiling and happy baking!

Tamara