One of my new year’s resolutions is to try a new bread recipe every Monday. I’ve been making our regular bread with our home-ground wheat for the past year, so I’m definitely ready to branch out!

On January 4th I tried the pretzel recipe in “Wildflour” by Denise M. Fidler. We use this book for many of our ground-wheat recipes. (The bread we make regularly was adapted by Momma from this book.)

Due to the hard work and copyright of the author, I won’t be posting the recipe, but I highly recommend “Wildflour” to anyone interested in grinding their own wheat.

Now for the pretzels. . .

The most delightful part was rolling out the chunks of dough into long floppy snakes and twisting them into the familiar and beloved pretzel figure.

How to twist a pretzel:

1. Using your hands, roll out the dough into a snake, about 2 feet long. (If the surface of the dough has dried a little, you can lightly rub it down with a bagel wash [1 c. warm water + 1/4 c. baking soda] while you roll it out.)

2. Take the two ends and switch them twice.

3. Then press them onto the opposite side of the pretzel.

4. Dip them in the water/baking soda mixture. Place them on the pan and sprinkle them with sea salt. (Table salt works fine. That’s what I used.)

These homemade pretzels were very tasty, especially with strawberry cream cheese. I’d also like to try making homemade strawberry cream cheese from strained low-fat yogurt and homemade strawberry jam. We’ll see how that goes.