I've recently discovered that writing a food blog can lead to tighter jeans... either that or the heat on our dryer is definitely too high! With my recent plethora of carb loaded recipes I decided that today was the day that I was going to go back to my low carb, lean protein diet for a few days, no cookies, no chocolate cakes and no breads. However... Liv had other plans.
After her successful day at our local Junior Lifeguard Competition where she place 2nd in the Beach Flag event, she woke up this morning with aching heels and a craving for the Pizza Pretzels that we have been planning to make since school got out. She and her dance friends frequently get pizza pretzels at our local smoothie shop, Beach City Smoothies, here in downtown Carlsbad and we thought we'd give them a try at home.
Shaping the pretzels seemed to be the most difficult part of this recipe for us, as making the dough and topping the formed pretzels is just like making a pizza. Our recipe recommended making the dough the night before baking and giving it a good night's rest in the fridge. Adding the spices directly to the dough gave the pretzels a full depth of flavor that we have found lacking in other pretzels that only have spices on top of a plain pretzel.
The baking soda/water bath was a bit nerve wracking for us, but proved to be a piece of cake. Placing the baking soda into the hot water and dissolving is recommended just before you dip your pretzels for a few seconds into the water bath. The baking soda/water bath allows the pretzels to gain a shiny, brown crust with a light interior. Unfortunately, I think our measurements were a bit off and we hadn't realized that the baking soda should be added to the bath and dissolved immediately before dipping. As such, our pretzels were a bit more breadlike, but I can see how this will work for our future batches.
