sourdough pretzels

the pretzels were brushed with melted butter while still warm

Scanning the latest King Arthur Flour Baker's catalog, I saw an interesting recipe for sourdough pretzels that looks very promising. I have to admit I have long been intimidated with the idea of making bagels and pretzels. There's something about the procedure that requires them to be submerged in boiling water before the  actual baking that I somehow equate with failure :-) I got interested to try this recipe as it skipped that part. 

I have to say my husband and I were very happy with the result. Although they were not done the traditional way, these pretzels had the chewy factor with good flavor and the right texture. Since I seldom bake bread without replacing at least part of the flour with whole wheat, I combined 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 cups all purpose flour. My sourdough starter has the consistency of pancake batter but I was using whole wheat flour so I had to add an extra 2 tablespoons of water to the mixture to get a slightly sticky dough. I used my handy bread machine for mixing the dough but I followed the rising time suggested in the recipe. Here's the SOURDOUGH PRETZELS recipe and procedure from the King Arthur Flour website.

this one was sprinkled with black sesame seeds