Pretzel Madness!

I am catering a wedding this week and one of the items is a build-your-own ham and cheese sandwich on a pretzel roll. Yep, a roll made like a pretzel. I made a HUGE batch (YAY! for access to a 60 quart industrial mixer with a dough hook!!) of dough on Tuesday, let it rise in four 5 gallon buckets (gotta leave lots of room for rising) then boiled and baked 200+ rolls today. They taste great, and we even had left over dough that Mom made into small odd-shaped pretzel bites. Mom helped a lot, weighing out dough pieces for me to roll and boiling the rolls as I washed, salted, baked, and cooled the pretzels. 

This is half the dough. It was more bread dough than I had ever made.

First you divide and roll the dough, these were 60-65 grams each

Then you boil them in a mixture of water and baking soda for 30-45 seconds per side

Then you brush with egg, cut an X in the top (to allow for expansion in the oven) and sprinkle with pretzel salt

Bake until golden brown and delicious

Let cool

Wash, rinse, repeat, and soon you have this, which is only part of the 200+ rolls we made

And these are the little ones Mom made.