Rosemary Cheese Soft Pretzels

My dad loves soft pretzels. They are one of the food items he cannot resist whenever we go out (one of the others being hot dogs . . . he is a very special dude!). So, to crown off the bake-celebration, I made him some delicious home-made rosemary sea-salt pretzels with rosemary cheese sauce, courtesy of the baking brilliance of two peas and their pod. Apologies in advance for the even-worse-than-usual quality of the photographs in this post -- for some reason, my camera was acting up.

From the above photo, you can probably already tell that no pretzel provider is going to hire me anytime soon to shape pretzels. Instead of being pretty and having those fabulous classic pretzel lines . . .erm, curves . . . mine turned out like blobs. But, like delicious blobs!

To make pretzels, you roll out the dough into long strands.

Then cross the ends of the strands . . .

Flip and smoosh in. Theoretically this should look like a pretzel. Mine look a little sad.

Then you boil them in a bath of water and loads of baking soda. I eased them in on a giant spatula so they lost their shape a little less.

At first I was totally shocked by this step and really didn't understand what the deal was with it. Then, I did some googling. Turns out, this step is what gives soft pretzels their yummy tang. Without it, they would be a lot like bagels. Who knew? Now you knew!

Then bake until golden and delicious-looking.

The cheese sauce is fortunately way easy to whip up. Try not to sample it all away while it's cooking -- it's addictive!

Scarf warm and with liberal quantities of cheese sauce.

Ease: 6
Taste: 9.5
Comfort: 8