Surprise! Pretzels

It is Sourdough Surprises time again! I continue to love Eve, so I am so excited to be involved with this new group. Kinda proud, too, since I am a part of it...! This month we made sourdough pretzels. Yum. I love pretzels. Especially soft pretzels. I am a Philly (area) girl. We know soft pretzels. And I have a tradition with some of my college friends involving the mall pretzels. So this was a special one to me.
We used this recipe as our basis for the challenge. And I stuck to it pretty faithfully. It was good. A keeper, for sure!
The dough, stretched and ready to cut:
The first couple of pretzels. And expert roller I am not, but they sort of looked pretzel-like...!Ready to rest in the sunshine:The first step in properly cooking soft pretzels is a bath in boiling water with baking soda. Which bubbles up. A lot. Like this:

After their bath the pretzels are almost ready to be baked. First they need to be coated. The recipe called for egg wash and salt. I did two different toppings. The first, melted margarine and kosher salt. The second, melted cinnamon sugar spread and coarse cinnamon sugar. With a helper on the coating:

And the finished pretzels:

Yum. These are so good. They are better fresh, but they do reheat well. And they will be made again. I need to be careful, though, they are addictive! I couldn't keep from snacking on them! If you have a sourdough starter, please treat yourself to these pretzels. They are nowhere near as labor intensive as I feared they would be, and they are so worth it! I want to play with them, try filled, bite sized and any other type of pretzel I think of!
I hope you'll surprise even yourself and sourdough with us next month!!