Seems like a strange way to start the day

This morning I woke up early and started working on a batch of soft pretzels based on a Joy of Cooking recipe.

Originally, meaning at about 11:00 PM last night, I wanted to make croissants, but after reading the recipe and directions I realized that such a project would have to wait until I learn to develop a greater sense of respect for cookbook instructions. So eventually I settled on pretzels (and almost decided to start making them at midnight and had to work quite hard to hold off until this morning).

Anyway, once I started the process I began to see that pretzels were also more complicated than I expected, though, I guess, not as bad croissants - and the process certainly didn't seem to be as long.

After the mixing, kneading, rising, rolling, rising, rolling, rising, and boiling I eventually came to the baking part of the experience (note that I omitted the salt sprinkling phase).

While I was originally planning on baking the boiled pretzels on parchment paper I decided to follow the instructions as laid out in the cookbook and decided to bake the pretzels on greased baking sheets. Of course as soon as I took the first tray out of the oven I realized that things had gone horribly wrong.

This first tray of pretzels had become quite stuck to the baking sheets. After some time I learned that the only way to remove even part of the pretzel was to rip the top off (and immediately consume it).

Afte quickly dispatching with six pretzels the second tray was ready to come out of the oven. For some reason on this tray only one of the four pretzels was completely adhered to the tray while the other three seemed just to be more adhered than they should have been (but I did manage to remove them without causing them too much damage).

Fortunately I still had two un-boiled pretzels whose fates had not been consigned to a greased baking tray. For these two pretzels I used parchment paper and they worked out perfectly. I guess I know that in the future I will have to ignore the 'greased tray' baking instruction and just go with parchment paper.

Fortunately, at least if you ignore the sticking-to-the-pan problem, the pretzels actually turned out quite nicely. They all had that nice pretzel flavour that we have come to know and love. They also turned an appealing tannish brown and really look kind of like pretzels.

Hopefully next time I make pretzels I will end up with a batch that results in more than five out of twelve successful pretzels.