What I Ate:
Pretzel Dog Bites
Why it was awesome:
The grocery store was out of both tiny hotdogs AND crescent rolls in a tube (that’s what I get for going to the store at 10am on sportsball sunday). And I needed some sort of salty-meaty-carby goodness. Enter: pretzel dogs, and they were awesome.
The Recipe, My Way Adapted from King Arthur Flour
for the dough
361g (3 cups) AP flour
11g (1TB) sugar
1 tablespoon soft butter
6g (1tsp) salt
2 teaspoons instant yeast
227g (1 cup) warm water
for the water bath
1.5-2 quarts water
18g (1TB) salt
64g (1/4 cup) baking soda
and of course: hot dogs! Cut each dog into 4 pieces. You will need 6 hot dogs if you want to stuff all 24 pretzels. But having some plain pretzels is delicious too!
Mix all of the dough ingredients together. If using a stand mixer, knead for ~5 minutes with the dough hook until the dough is a cohesive sticky smooth ball. You can also knead by hand, but it will be a bit longer than 5 minutes.
Rest, covered, in a warm spot for 30 minutes or until doubled in size.
About 25 minutes into the rise: In a wide saucepan, combine water, salt and baking soda. Bring to a simmer.
Preheat your oven to 400F
Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper. Grease them lightly (spray works fine)
Deflate the dough, and cut into 24 pieces. Flatten each piece of dough, and wrap it around a piece of hot dog. Place on the prepared parchment. Cover the prepared pretzels if you are still waiting for your water to boil.
Drop 6 pretzels into the water at a time, cook for 30 seconds, and remove with a slotted spoon back onto the parchment. Top with salt.
Bake for 18-20 minutes until golden.
Serve with mustard!
Note: if you have extra dough, or you only want to make a few pretzel dogs, you could make sweet ones rolled in cinnamon sugar! Or cheese stuffed ones! The sky is the limit for pretzel goodness!