Mini Cheesecakes

So, I wanna move on to the pretzels

All right, we're gonna start with a packet of yeast, and we've got a cup of warm water

and the water temperature should be 98 degrees. Gonna come over here and I'm gonna take our flour

and I'm gonna sift it into this bowl. Now, I'm getting this pot of water ready to boil

because this is what we're going to cook our pretzels in, and I'm going to add some baking soda

And they say it brings out the flavor. Now, to our dissolved yeast

I'm going to add 2 tablespoons of softened butter. You didn't think we was going to make a pretzel

without butter, did you? And I'm going to add a little salt

and I'm going to add half of our flour to this. to this

Now I'm gonna sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of sugar over that

And we're gonna proceed to mix this for three minutes. I love the smell of yeast

It kind of reminds me of those fabulously divine yeast rolls that the school made

when I was in grammar school and high school. I just loved them

Okay, I'm gonna come in here now and add the rest of our flour

I gonna mix that up real good Okay so here we go All right just put a little flour in that pretty pretty dough

See what a pretty dough that batter made? It's just beautiful. And now we're gonna just put our dough here

and we're just gonna cover this, and I'm gonna sit it aside in a warm place

Now, you can cover it with saran wrap, but I just like the idea of that damp rag

until it doubles in size. And I think right back here is a good spot

And when we come back, I'm gonna show you how to shape and cook these pretzels

and show you some more home movies. Go Sand Nights! Okay, our dough should have doubled in size by now

And yes, it has. Punch it down. See all the air coming out of it

And that's gonna redistribute the yeast back through our pretzels. All right

Let our dough fall out onto our floured surface. All right, we're gonna knead this some more

So now this batch of dough that we have is gonna make a dozen pretzels So I gonna cut it in half

Okay. Roll it around in the flour. And we're gonna roll this piece of dough out

to about 18 inches. That looks like 18 inches. So all we're gonna do is pick up each end

Criss-cross it, and criss-cross it again, and we've got our pretzel. We're going to put him right over there because we are going to let these rise one more time on our tray before we throw them into our boiling water

So we're going to pick it up, twist it, and twist it, and bring it down

And we've got our pretzel. Now we're going to stick these over to the side in a warm place, and we're going to let

them re-rise. But in the meantime, I've got another batch over here ready

And I'm going to take our spatula, and I'm going to give it a spray

And we've got our water here boiling. and you can see how that slipped right off

And I'm gonna boil these for about one minute. Their process is much like cooking a bagel

in the fact that they go in water before they go into the oven All right we gonna take our last three out and cut off that hot stove I about worked up a sweat here like I did at the ballpark

Ooh, that was the hottest ballpark. So now, I'm gonna take my butter

and I'm gonna butter these up real, real good because I'm gonna sprinkle them with a lot of kosher salt

The salt is what gives it its punch or the sesame seed or whatever you're using

Plus it can't hurt the taste of them, surely not. All right, now I'm gonna take my kosher salt

And I think in your frozen food section where you can buy the frozen pretzels

I think they may have actually a pretzel salt in them. But this kosher salt works just as good

as far as I'm concerned. So we're gonna run these in a 500 degree preheated oven

for about 10 to 12 minutes, and then we're gonna have a nice, fat, hot homemade pretzel

All right, my first batch is ready over here. It should be ready, and it is

Now, I don't know about y'all, but I love my pretzels with mustard

So, I'm gonna check it out. It's still kind of warm. This is so good