Pretzel Rolls

I am a little addicted to pretzel rolls. I love sandwiches on these little suckers. There is a great sandwich place in my neighborhood called Jerry's Sandwiches, they use the most delicious pretzel rolls. I have tried making regular pretzels and they turned out great! So of course, I needed to try my hand at making rolls. I was so surprised when I opened the oven because I saw all these cute little pretzel rolls. I think I actually screamed "I made pretzel rolls!"

Recipe
1 cup warm water
2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
2 and 3/4 cup bread flour
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt, plus more for sprinkling
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 cups water
1/4 cup baking soda

Place water in a bowl and sprinkle yeast on top, gently stir. Set aside for about 5 minutes. You want the yeast to get foamy. If it doesn't, it means the water wasn't warm enough or the yeast was old. Make sure it foams and if not then start over.

When the yeast is ready add the flour, sugar and salt. I used the dough hook on my mixer, but you could easily knead this by hand. Mix until the dough is smooth and elastic. If using a dough hook you can mix for about 8 minutes. Once it is done, place in an oiled bowl (olive oil) and roll the dough in the oil, cover and let rise for about 1 hour. You want the dough to double in size.

Once the dough has doubled, punch it down and knead for about 1 minute. Now you can divide the dough into about 16 rolls. Mine turned out a little small, next time I will make them bigger. Place the uncooked rolls on the parchment paper.

Cover the rolls with a dish towel and let them rise for another 30 minutes or until they have doubled in size. After they have doubled you will want to slice an x on top of each roll (I forgot to do this, until Chris came over and did it to a few and they turned out much prettier). Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees. Also bring 6 cups of water to a boil. When the water is boiling add the baking soda to the water.

The water will get nice and bubbly. Drop a few of the rolls into the water. Boil them for 2 minutes a side. You will need to do this in a few batches.

The water will start out nice and calm, but mine got a little crazy!

Once you have boiled them 2 minutes a side, take them out and place somewhere to dry. If I had one of those cooling racks, I would have used that, but I don't so I just placed them on some parchment paper.

When you have them all boiled. Brush them with the egg wash. For the egg wash, just whisk up an egg and add a little water to it. After you have brushed them with egg wash, sprinkle a little salt on top of each roll.

Place them in the oven for 10-12 minutes. I baked mine on a pizza stone. You can bake them on a parchment lined baking sheet as well.

As I said earlier, I was so excited to see that I made pretzel rolls. They were delicious too! We ate them plain as well as made little sandwiches with them.

Bacon, tomato and guacamole on a pretzel roll! yum yum!