At that moment, I wished I was at my own place, getting comfy and not having to deal with the heat. At the same time, I was already baking the bread, soft pretzel, something that I’ve always wanted to do. It was like me getting baked instead of the bread getting baked. Anyway, I was resting my dough but I knew something was a bit off with my dough. I only waited and eventually when I opened it, they didn't stick together. Suddenly, my mom came downstairs and checked on my dough. She starts nagging, asking me many questions instead of leaving me alone.

“ This is the recipe any elementary kids can do” I yelled at her for something she said previously.
“ I am too stupid for this,” I added.

I can tell you as much that living with a baker is not fun, my mom sets high standards for everything and it can be exhausting. Nothing I do ever gets right. Other moms would be so proud if their kids can bake but not my mom. You sort of have to be a patissier or a master baker and even when you’ve become one, that’s still not enough. So, that’s the picture.

This is the result from my failed pretzel in the first try

I started all over again with my dough and I eventually found out what went wrong. Okay but first, here’s what you need to make a soft pretzel. It’s nothing too difficult.

In this measurement, it yields about 7 pretzels a bit on the smaller size. You can do it for 4 and make a jumbo soft pretzel.

• 145gr Bread flour
• 3 tbsp Active Yeast
• 90 ml Water
• Salt
• Sugar
• 2 tbps Oil
• 2 tbsp Baking soda
• An egg for the egg wash

Basically, if you have bread flour and active yeast, you can make rustic bread and all types of hard bread. To make a soft pretzel, the first thing you have to do is make the yeast mixture.

Here’s the step-by-step

• Mix yeast, salt, sugar and water into one. Rest it for about 5-7 minutes.
• Add flour and oil into the bowl, mix it together.
• Then add the mixture of yeast slowly into the flour, little by little because if you don’t your dough won’t come out beautifully stretched and smooth.
• While mixing the yeast into the flour, stir them until they stick together and form a soft stretchy dough.
• Mix together and knead a little bit then rest for an hour in a bowl that’s slightly covered with oil.
• After an hour, cut the dough based on your preference.
• Roll them up into smaller long dough, preferably even on all sides.
• Make a knot with it.
• Bathe the dough in a mixture of baking soda boiling water
• Strain them and cover it with an egg wash.
• Sprinkle with flaky salt of if you don’t have just use sesame seeds
• Bake in the oven for 15 minutes

Here are some tips that I learned.

• To make the outer side crispy and not too hard, you have to sprinkle the dough with water and add a tray of water in the bottom part of the water. Once you put the dough inside, you also have to spray/sprinkle water inside the oven.
• While bathing them with baking soda, take 2 minutes on each side and watch them grow. It actually will make them stretchy, chewy but still soft inside.

In the end, they came out beautifully baked, soft while still chewy. It was not fun making these at first but I eventually get the hang of it. Amongst my favorite, pretzels is definitely on top then my bahn mi and eventually my bagels. I still have to make focaccia but I have to buy tomatoes and rosemary for them. I also have ciabatta next but that’s for another week and before I am leaving back again. I have to say that bread-making is not too difficult. It doesn’t require difficult techniques unlike pastries which I tried making the other day, I was not too patient. My mom said, “ baking is like an art, you have to be calm, passionate and patient.” which is something I can’t do especially when I was feeling like I was baked alive.