Pretzel Dogs

OK, sorry but no photos.  Honestly, my kitchen is too messy for it, not to mention I have 5 "helpers", along with an equal number of cats, to be able to do photos.

This is the recipe that I used Pretzel Dog 

I love that this recipe is set up to use the stand mixer to begin with.  It makes mixing any kind of dough so much easier.  It also is not nearly as time consuming, which is another good thing considering the afore mentioned "helpers" and the destruction they tend to pull down upon my house (why my kitchen is a mess after all).

2 things that I modified for this recipe.  I used bread flour instead of all purpose.  I use bread flour whenever I'm baking any kind of dough, it gets fluffier and bigger and is so much more rewarding in appearance and flavor, at least I think so.  I also only use unbleached flour.  I don't understand the reason for doing a chemical process on my flour, so I don't want it.  The 2nd thing I changed is that I used regular old Oscar Mayer hot dogs.  If I were to make this recipe for a friend of mine, I'd use all beef dogs (he has a severe pork allergy), but for my family, Oscar Mayer is just fine.  Not to mention it's what I had in the house.

Once I let the dough rise, while I was doing the rolls, it made a LOT more than just 16.  I did 24 hot dogs (12 hot dogs cut in 1/2).  The dogs were very well covered.  If I had used the hole hot dog, it still would have covered 16 hot dogs.  That's a LOT of dough!  I still had enough dough left over to make 4 medium sized pretzels for the weird picky kid who doesn't eat meat.  He's my kid so I can call him weird all I want.

For the egg wash, I used 2 egg yolks instead of one.  I figured that considering I had more dogs, I'd need more egg.  I did the wash and sprinkled, liberally with kosher salt. What I found is this - with the egg wash they turned out much darker than I would like.  I cut the cooking time down to 10 minutes and they were still cooked all the way through, but very dark on top.  I think a lighter color would have been nice.  Next time I'll most likely do a milk wash instead of using egg.

The kids loved them.  The first pan I pulled out - it had 9 dogs on it, was gone before I could get the 2nd pan into the oven.  They didn't last very long at all. 

I think these would be great made with cheese in them, use the pretzel recipe to make cheesey bites, or smaller scale and use the Lil' Smokies.