This year has been a year of discovery: my inner baker. Or is it chef? Ah, whatever.

I’m discovering that I really like making things from scratch.

1. They taste better than boxed or frozen things.
2. It’s frugal.
3. It fulfills some inner homemaker need deep within.

This past year I’ve learned how to make:

• Chocolate Chip Granola Bars
• Homemade bread
• Pizza dough
• Buttermilk biscuits
• Soft pretzels
• Bagels
• Flour tortillas

They’re all so easy. (Especially if you have a bread machine to make the dough, but even if you don’t.) The pretzels and bagels are basically the same process, you just divide the dough into different sized pieces and shape them accordingly. The dough for those and the pizza are made in the bread machine. But for the biscuits and tortillas I’ve learned the art of kneading and rolling. And guess what – I got the hang of it!

I’ve learned to make other things, too.

• pico de gallo
• taco seasoning
• pancakes (from scratch- no boxed mix!)
• alfredo sauce
• gravy nah, still working on that one

Not only do I feel like I’m becoming a better cook, my family seems to prefer the homemade version for most of those.

My daughter told me the other day that my biscuits rock and she never wants me to make the others again.

Last time I made Alfredo sauce I used a Knorr package mix – and my hubby commented I must’ve purchased a cheap brand or something because it wasn’t quite right. (He doesn’t know I usually make a homemade lower fat version!)

The kids love it when I make granola bars, and everyone raved about the flour tortillas.

Oh, sure, it only took me 30 years of life, 10 years of married cooking, and several months of bad experiments to get here, but now that I’m starting to get the hang of this, well.. it’s nice to feel it finally working for me!

Works for Me Wednesday is hosted by Shannon at Rocks In My Dryer.

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Last week, the kids and I made some impromptu, homemade soft pretzels – and they were wonderfully delicious!

See:

This is just a chronicling of our first attempt to make soft pretzels – which was a complete success, by the way! The complete recipe and instructions can be found here, at Mommy of Four.

Also, we experimented with a small group of them, adding sugar and cinnamon. The effect was similar to cinnamon rolls or cinnamon toast but in pretzel form.

The rest we ate with parmesan cheese. The kids loved them. The next morning we had leftover pretzels with our breakfast, warmed in the toaster, split open and spread with butter or cream cheese. YUM!

Here’s a few tips from our experience:

1. It took a few tries to get the hang of rolling them out thin and long enough.
2. I learned that it was actually harder to roll them out thin enough if there was too much flour on the table, they slipped instead of rolling.
3. We gave the 2yo one ball of dough to roll, squash and re-roll. So we actually made 23 instead of 24. But the ONE kept him from messing with the other 23!
4. During the “bathing” process, I used two plates. One to transfer the wet pretzels to the table, one to transfer new pretzels to the bath. I could reload the dry plate while the previous batch simmered and pick it up after dropping off the wet pretzels. It kept things flowing smoothly.
5. My pretzels didn’t actually need to bake as long as the recipe indicated. The first 8 almost burned! After that, I set the timer for 8 minutes and checked them every minute or two.

Edited to add: I wasn’t sure which flour to use so I used half bread flour and half all purpose flour, I also some wheat gluten.

Wanna learn more about making pretzels? Let Alton Brown show you how. (Of course, he doesn’t use a bread machine, but he’ll teach you why the baking soda bath is important.)

• Part 1
• Part 2

Have fun making your own homemade pretzels!