Asthma + Baking fail

This ragweed season is killing me. Literally! My asthma is so bad that I’m doing nebulizer treatments through the day and on steroids. Yuck. They make me paranoid, YOU talking to me? (Ha ha)  So I can’t get out and do a whole lot which is so ironic because the weather is gorgeous, just unfortunate that the ragweed and lovely early fall weather go hand in hand. I’m sooo ready for the ragweed to be done already. Honestly how much is there and when will it be done?

So to cheer myself up I tried out a new recipe. I don’t necessarily want to say whose recipe it was, because I love her so (in a blog crush sort of way)  Sigh. I am certain it is my fault or a climate difference or something.

So I tried to make these pretzels. It wasn’t hard, the bread machine did the dough and then I pulled it out, let it rise and attempted to form pretzels. But the dough was waay too springy. I couldn’t get the rolls thin enough they kept rising up on me. So when I made them they were puffy and coiled. Coiled..Brown and tan loops. And they were heavy – and I only used 1/2 whole wheat flour (recipe called for all whole wheat) 8 cups of flour for 12 pretzels, yeah, they were heavy. I tried to eat one, it was not good. I tried soaking it in butter and kosher salt.   It looked marginally better. OK, not really. Honestly it looked a lot like big dog poo poo. But shiny and salty. I tasted it, it was horrific, do you remember as a kid ever making salt dough to play with or make ornaments with and of course the grownups told you not to eat it, but it looked so much like cookie dough so you just had to have a bite…well that is how these tasted. Not good.

Oh how I mourn those 8 cups of flour and that stick of butter and those two and a half cups of milk – that was a lot of groceries to literally dump in the trash. I was too sad to even take a picture.  I am determined to try again to make my own soft pretzels, the kids love the ones from the mall and I’ll be darned if I’ll give up. I will just have to keep at it.