A Cooking Mistake

What could I take to a get together that would be tasty, yet different than the usual fare? Pretzels would be something different but I did not want to go to the store so I looked in my pantry. A small package of DeLallo pizza dough caught my eye and I wondered if the pizza dough would work for the Pretzels. It did say the it was perfect for pizza, focaccia, calzones and stromboli. It didn't say anything about Pretzels but after reading how it was to be prepared I figured it was basically the same as if I made my own dough. I could not make my own dough because I did not have any yeast in the house.

I placed the pizza flour in a large bowl and mixed as the recipe instructed. Three easy steps would make four ten inch pizzas. I mixed the flour with luke-warm water and stirred it with a fork until it was well mixed. I covered it and let it rise for about an hour. When I uncovered the dough it was twice as big as when I had started. It was sticky. I added more flour and pulled small balls which I rolled between my hands to make a long dough rope. Carefully, I made a bow, brushed the tops with milk and sprinkled them with salt. I made six and placed them on a cookie sheet on parchment paper. The oven was set at 425 degrees and my bows looked pretty. How proud I felt that I had improvised to make the pretzels!

The instructions advised me to cook for about 15 minutes. Forty-five minutes later, the globs in the oven still looked white and uncooked. My beautiful pretzels had become large, round balls with obscene looking protrusions. By the time they had browned and I took them out, they did not look like pretzels. The outside was a bit hard but after they cooled I bit into one and the taste was good, the texture was like a pretzel and if it had not been for the shapeless ball I would have had a successful pretzel.

Of course, I did not take them to the party. The good thing is that the house smelled like freshly baked bread.  My advice is to never use pizza dough to make pretzels!