I had a life changing experience today. And I shall never be the same. The experience was so ethereal, I felt compelled to document my emotions in the poetry of my heart.

A Haiku About Bread

you light up my life

my heart and jeans overflow

be mine forever

A Limerick About Bread

I looked at my belly as I sat

How can I get rid of that?

Should I give up my bread?

And eat lettuce instead?

I think I will just stay fat.

A couplet about bread

If the streets of heaven are paved with gold, instead

I want to go wherever it is they are paved with bread

If ever there was a baked good that could inspire such poetry, it would be these bonkers delicious pretzel nuggets. I made them today, and my family devoured them before the oven even cooled down. You will feel like a kitchen rockstar, eating these crusty little pillows of happiness. Jump down for the recipe, and keep on a’scrolling for some step-by-step photos.

Spoiler alert: These are really easy and start to finish took less than 2 hours, and that includes the rising and baking times.

After you’ve mixed up your dough and let it do it’s first rising time, plop it onto a clean and greased counter. Shape into the vague approximation of a rectangle. This is not a scientific process.

Once your dough is some semblance of a rectangle, cut it into 4 strips, each about 1 inch wide. Let these strips hang out for 5 minutes while you mix up the baking soda and and warm water. Mix in a liquid measuring cup or mug or some other vessel wherein you can dunk your pretzel nuggets.

Cut each strip into 6-8 pieces. Again, nothing needs to be precise here- just roughly the same size. Dunk each piece into the baking soda water and place onto the baking sheets. Make sure the baking soda stays dissolved in the water- just give it a stir as it settles.

I used one baking sheet with parchment paper and one without. So I could see if the parchment paper made a difference, because I hate fiddling with parchment paper if I don’t need to. And also, I ran out of parchment paper. So it was an experiment born of necessity. The results of my experiment are that it doesn’t matter one bit. Use parchment paper if it makes your bell ring or if you don’t have good baking sheets, or don’t if you’re lazy like me.

Pop one pan into the oven. The other can wait just fine. Bake for 7-8 minutes, until golden brown. Let them get pretty brown- that chewy crust is unreal.  

Straight from the oven, brush them with melted butter. Don’t be shy. This is not a diet food.

Oh, hello.

I take thee, Pretzel Nugget, to be my lawfully wedded husband.

Stack them up real purty in a bowl, while your husband and son weep and wail that they want to eat them now and don’t want to wait.

Look at that pillowy inside. It’s the stuff of dreams, I tell you. My dreams, at least.

Then, if you’re bad, remember that you have some queso leftover from the Super Bowl, and dunk some of these bad boys into the queso. If this is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

Make these! I had no idea delicious pretzel nuggets were so easy to make and so easy to eat an entire batch so quickly.

Original recipe is from, of course,  Mel’s Kitchen Cafe. I don’t even know why I’m bothering with a food blog; hers is the only one that needs to exist in the world. Every single one of her recipes is dynamite and I love her and wish we were real life best friends.

Homemade Pretzel Nuggets

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Ingredients

  

• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
• 1 cup very warm water

Topping

• 1/2 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons baking soda
• Coarse salt
• 3 tablespoons butter melted

Instructions

 

• In a large bowl or the bowl of an electric mixer, place the flour, salt, sugar and yeast. Mix to just combine. Add the water and mix well, adding more flour, as needed, a bit at a time to form a soft, smooth dough that clears the sides and bottom of the bowl. Knead the dough, by hand or machine, for about 5 minutes, until it is soft, smooth and quite slack. The goal is to get a really soft dough that isn’t overly sticky. Lightly flour the dough and place it in a plastic bag; close the bag, leaving room for the dough to expand, and let it rest for 30 minutes or up to 60 minutes.
• Preheat your oven to 500°F. Don’t be afraid of the high heat! This is what will help those pretzels to brown up perfectly and stay soft on the inside. Prepare two baking sheets by lining them with parchment paper or lightly greasing them (I’ve learned it helps to coat the parchment paper with cooking spray).
• Transfer the dough to a lightly greased work surface, and divide it into about four strips of equal length. Allow the pieces to rest, uncovered, for 5 minutes. While the dough is resting, combine the 1/2 cup warm water and the baking soda in a liquid measuring cup (deep enough to dip the pretzel bites into). Make sure the baking soda is thoroughly dissolved. Sometimes I have a hard time getting the baking soda completely dissolved, so I just lightly stir up the mixture right before adding each pretzel.
• Cut each strip of dough into about 6-8 pieces, about 1 to 1 ½ inches in width. You don’t have to be completely exact, just eyeball it. Dip each pretzel bite in the baking soda solution (this will give the pretzels a nice, golden-brown color), and place them on the baking sheets. Sprinkle them lightly with coarse, kosher, or pretzel salt. Allow them to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
• Bake the pretzels for 7-8 minutes or until they’re golden brown. Bake one sheet at a time – it won’t hurt the other pretzels to chill out for a little longer.
• Remove the pretzels from the oven, and brush them thoroughly with the melted butter. Keep brushing the butter on until you’ve used it all up; it may seem like a lot, but that’s what gives these pretzels their ethereal taste. Eat the pretzels warm, or reheat them in an oven or microwave on low heat.