My First Soft Pretzels

Miso Garlic Butter = 2tbsp vegan margarine, 2 tsp yellow miso paste, 1/4 tsp garlic powder (smoosh together and microwave for 20-30 seconds to melt)

Today was a blah kind of day here. It's getting chilly and grey. The time of year where I want to hibernate. Bears really have it figured out. I figured we would need a little carbo loading to get ready so today Mac and I made homemade soft pretzels. I used Alton Brown's recipe from Food Network's website. It was pretty simple and the only change I made was vegan margarine for the unsalted butter (and reduced the salt a bit since our margarine is a bit salty) and used a bit of cornstarch mixed with cool water in place of the egg wash to keep the salt stuck. Mac was really excited for kneading the dough and even though I let the stand mixer do most of the work I did let him give it a turn or two. The only downside of a yeast dough to a four year old is the waiting. He wanted to eat them right then and wasn't real happy with me as I explained the whole rising process.

We decided we would shape them into letters, one for each member of our household. There's a giant D for Daddy, a N for Nana, one M for Mac and one M for Mommy. One M has cinnamon sugar rolled inside of it and Mac decided that could be mine. Score for me! The rest I made into traditional pretzel shapes. I decided to make a flavoured butter to dip mine in. I went with a miso garlic butter (recipe under photo as caption in case you missed it) and hot damn, it was tasty! Kinda like the Parmesan butter they pour over crazy bread at Little Caesars. It will definitely find it's way onto some bread sticks sometime soon and now I'm really craving pizza! I think this weekend we will have a pizza party!

Thinking deep pretzel thoughts