Welcome to my series called Conveniently At Home. The idea of this series is to slowly transition myself from buying pre-made or processed foods and eventually make most of my foods “from scratch.” This will be a slow journey but one worth the wait!
My kids absolutely love pretzels! I was really excited to see that my Make-A-Mix
For the pretzels, you need to make their Hot Rolls Mix. (They also give you 19 other recipes you can turn the Hot Rolls Mix into!) The Hot Rolls Mix makes 22 Cups but you’ll only need 5 Cups for the Pretzel Recipe. I just save the extra for another day or another recipe.
Prep Work: Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Lightly grease the cookie sheets that you’ll be using.
Hot Rolls Mix
5 lb. (20 cups) of all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups sugar
4 teaspoons salt
1 cup instant nonfat dry milk
Mix all of those ingredients together in one bowl:
After making the mix, then proceed with the recipe for Pretzels. Here are the ingredients you’ll need:
5 cups of Hot Rolls Mix (above)
1 tablespoon active dry yeast (or 1 of the 1/4-oz. packages)
1- 1/2 cups of lukewarm water, about 110 degrees
2 eggs, beaten -in one bowl
1/4 cup veg. oil or melted margarine
1 egg, beaten – in a second bowl
2 tablespoons of coarse salt
1) In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water. Then stir in the 2 beaten eggs and add the oil or margarine.
2) Add 5 cups of the Hot Rolls Mix and stir well. (You can add more Hot Rolls Mix if you want to make it a softer dough.) You’ll then knead the mixture for 5 minutes until the dough is fairly smooth.
3) Take parts of the dough and roll them into ropes about 1/2″ diameter and about 18-24″ long. (The kids did these. They had so much fun rolling them!)
4) To form the pretzel shape, you make a circle shape and then twist the ends twice. Then bring the ends up onto the circle shape. For the kids, it was easier to just make the shape pictured above and then take each end and bring it to the opposite side of the pretzel. Place the pretzel onto the greased cookie sheet.
5) Then take the 1 beaten egg mixture and brush a little bit of it onto each of the pretzels. Finally, sprinkle the coarse salt on top of each pretzel.
6) Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes until brown and crisp and you get something yummy looking like this:
I made a pretty big batch and then froze any that we didn’t eat, after they had cooled. On the days when the kids are hungry for one, I just take some out of the freezer bag and microwave them on a microwave-safe plate until they are warm.
I store my leftover Hot Rolls Mix in a secure air-tight container for another day when we feel like making more pretzels. It saves me time to not have to keep making that mix over and over. Or I can use it for another recipe in the book.
This was just one fun adventure that I had with the kids. Remember to always keep your kids safely away from the oven and hot cookie sheets! I hope you enjoy this as much as we did. Not only was it a fun afternoon activity but we made our snacks for the day plus are ready with future snacks for another day!
You can check out past Conveniently At Home Recipes that I’ve shared, too.
Disclaimer: Always practice safe cooking and handling methods when in the kitchen.