Pretzels: dinner and dessert!

Dinner!

With two preschoolers and two full-time teachers in the house, life is usually crazy busy around here (except in the summer...I can't wait for summer!). By the end of the school day, we are all tired and discussions about dinner never go very well. So a couple of years ago, I bought a little white board that hangs between the fridge and the stove, and each weekend I plan meals for the week. It makes grocery shopping a lot easier...and a lot cheaper...and a lot less wasteful. And it makes our evenings a lot less stressful.

But the meal on tap for last night was soup, and when hubby and I heard that we were getting one more 75º day before going back into the 50ºs, we decided it wasn't soup weather. But we didn't have any back-up plans, and that's never a good thing.

Luckily, I opened up my Google Reader first thing in the morning and saw this recipe for pretzel dogs from Tracey. Dinner!

I was able to rush home after work and whip up the dough. It was a beautiful dough to work with. (This was also Austin's debut; I used the leftover starter after one of his feedings in the dough in place of some flour and water.) :) Knowing that it would rise for a little bit longer than called for while I went to pick up the kids, I used slightly cool water. When I got home with the kiddos, it was doubled and ready to roll!

I divided the dough into fourteen 65g portions, rolled each into a long snake, and wrapped it around a half-hotdog. I used the leftover dough to make 25 pizza bites. These were all boiled in water and baking soda, brushed with an egg wash, and the dogs were sprinkled with salt. They baked for 15 minutes and were done and cooled by dinner time.

When I popped a pretzel bite into hubby's mouth, he immediately said, "Pretzels!?" I couldn't believe how pretzelly the flavor was; way more than any other pretzel recipe I've ever tried. The rest of the bites were dipped in melted butter and then coated in cinnamon sugar.

Pretzels for dinner and dessert...can't beat that!

Dessert!