A pretzel making day

I found a recipe for homemade pretzels a few days ago and have been eager to try them.  Today I finally felt like I had the time to do it.

I have never made pretzels before.  Nor have I every purchased any like this (big & soft).  They just looked tasty so I wanted to make them.

I took a few photos during the process to share with you.

After mixing and forming the ball, this is about 1/3 of the batch.

Then it had to be rolled out like a snake

and shaped like a pretzel.

I ended up with six pretzels.  I used coarse salt on most of them,

but I had some strusel mix that I could put on a couple of them.

They don't look like pretzels!  Here is one of each "flavor". 

We did like them though.  They were soft & chewy and tasty. 

What did I learn? 

1:  I need to use less dough per pretzel - thus get more of the end product.  I should have gotten 8-10 (just like the recipe says), but ...

2:  The dough rises so count for that when making & shaping them - at least if you want them to look like pretzels!

3:  Don't overdo the salt.  Yep, these were a bit salyt.  Lucky for us we could scratch a few of the salt nuggets off.

4:  The sweet ones were really tasty.

Oh, the recipe?  Here is a link:  Homemade Pretzels