Soft Pretzels

Today I made soft pretzels. Pretzels were invented in A.D. 610 when a kindly monk in Aosta decided that the praying children needed a reward for praying. The monk couldn't come up with anything, so he went into the monastery kitchen and saw a scrap of yeast resembling the arms of a praying child. He sprinkled the dough with salt and named it pretiola, meaning "little reward." And that's how the pretzel was made.

Hard Part-Rolling and Shaping

What I learned is that there is a protein in flour called gluten, and when you knead it the chains of protein in the gluten harden, making it hard to roll. So you have to let it sit before you can roll it so the chains of protein will relax.

It was nutty and amazingly delicious!