Pizza at Home - National Pretzel Day - Pretzel Crust Pizza - April 26th

Happy Sunday! Today we're celebrating National Pretzel Day! Yes, I know we just made pretzel pizzas not too long ago. But I saw another opportunity to try another variation of pretzel pizza and decided to go for it! 

Little Caesars makes a pretzel crust pizza, with a cheese sauce base and topped with pepperonis. I think I can do something like that! 

I'm not just making pretzel pizza today though. Everyone loves homemade pretzels, so I'm making a quadruple batch of the Almost-Famous Soft Pretzel dough. 

There's a lot to do today, so Theresa is helping. 

The dough all came together a bit shaggy, but instead of mixing in the kitchen-aid we're going to do this by hand. 

Doing it this way helped figure out how much more flour needed to be added to get the right consistency. After 5 minutes of kneading, it's ready to rise and double in size. 

Just enough time for us to go on a bike ride! 

It's springtime and the roses are in full bloom! They smell fantastic and we like to stop and enjoy them. 

Now that is some happy yeast! These have more than doubled. 

I made a cheese sauce with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and a combination of mozzarella and sharp cheddar. 

Perfect. 

The pretzel dough was very easy to form into a pizza shape. It's not as sticky as the dough I usually make. I brushed the whole thing with water mixed with baking soda. 

Next the cheese sauce goes down. 

That gets topped with more mozzarella cheese and then pepperonis. They were all placed down pretty symmetrically. 

I brushed the edge again with baking soda water and sprinkled it with coarse pretzel salt. 

The last time I made pretzels, I used the tiny little bit of counter space I had. Theresa is making use of the table to get the full stretch out of the dough. 

She gives it a little twist, dips it in baking soda water, then puts it on a tray for baking. 

The last time I made pretzels I filled them with a few different things. I'll be making those today too, but I also wanted to try to make a sweetened cream cheese filled pretzel. 

I changed my technique though this time, not rolling the dough as flat and only pinching the dough closed around the filling. 

Lunch today! We had Jacob and Matt over for a drive-way meal, so we've got a pretty big spread. There's salad of course from Chi. And then all the pretzels Theresa and I made. There's cream cheese filled, cheese filled, pepperoni topped, salted, and plain. There's pretzel crust pizza, homemade cheese dipping sauce, homemade pizza sauce for dipping, and then Jacob and Matt brought lots of stuff for dessert!

All those pepperonis were symmetric, but once things started cookings, things started sliding around. 

Those pinched edges were having a hard time sticking together. I also filled some of those middle areas of the pretzels with cheese and topped them with pepperonis. Those turned out great!

Another tasty pizza day!

The pretzel crust pizza turned out really great! I loved the cheese sauce base. And the crust of it was just like a pretzel. I dipped it in the homemade cheese sauce and it was wonderful!

The sweet cream cheese filled pretzel was delicious! I was mostly just seeing if I could do it though. I'm sure it would taste just the same to dip the pretzels in cream cheese too. 

But overall, this was a very successful day! Happy National Pretzel Day!