This month's baking challenge with the EBcO baking group was soft pretzels.

I decided to make Alton Brown's recipe, and I was surprised how easy it was. I'm not a very experienced baker, and though the pretzels didn't look perfect, they tasted great.

There is something very comforting about making dough and watching it rise. I'm a tiny bit impatient, so I always leave the dough to rise in a bowl I've covered in plastic wrap and placed in the sun to hopefully speed up the process.

Pretzels are the fussiest bread I've ever made, just because they need to be rolled out and twisted. It took me a few tries, but by my fourth pretzel I had it down.

I had a lot of fun with the forming step, once I got the hang of it.

Please forgive my haggard appearance; this was that day I was crazy hungover and just a mess. I was feeling pretty rough, and pretzels seemed comforting

By far the hardest part of the whole process was boiling the pretzels before baking them. My pretzels had a tendency to fall apart and untwist once I got them in the boiling water. Unlike the twisting, I didn't really get better at this part of the process as I went along. Fortunately, after a 30 second dip in their boiling bath they were pretty easy to put back together- though they didn't look very promising.

I popped these glutinous, mushy blobs in the oven and out came soft, golden pretzels.

While they baked I put together this really tasty hot mustard for dipping.

They were quite something actually, Josh and I abandoned dinner altogether and supped on hot pretzels brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with kosher salt instead. Dipped in the hot mustard they were irresistible.