Grosgrain: Rainbow Pretzel Sticks

Yesterday, the kids, Brian and I made homemade pretzels via Auntie Ann's box kit. But we decided to do a little twist and add food coloring to risen dough. Summer is nearly ending and I wanted to celebrate what was left with this summery "twist".

You could make so many fun things with rainbow pretzels. Make a rainbow with the dough strips. Make red Valentine's pretzels in the shape of a heart. Make St. Patrick's day pretzels in the shape of a shamrock. Make fourth of July red, white and blue pretzels sticks. Really, just think of a holiday and there's probably a colored pretzel to go with it;-)

How-To

Follow the instructions on your Auntie Ann's pretzel kit and stop just before you are to soak the dough in the baking soda water. If you don't have an Auntie Ann's kit just use this soft pretzel recipe.

Then Step 1: I bought a McCormick food coloring kit which is probably pretty common in most grocery stores. It came with only yellow, green, blue and red. To make purple I used a little ceramic cup and per the instructions on the box, mixed the correct amount of drops for purple and orange.

Step 2: Use foil to knead your dough on. Most other things will soak up the food coloring. Wax paper would also work but that tends to curl. If you want to completely avoid mixing colors, replace your foil with every new color you knead. Take a piece of dough and kneaded it flat. Depending on the shape you are making and how much dough you are kneading, add your drops into the center. I was making 6" long pretzels sticks so I added about 5 drops at first.

Step 3: I folded the dough in half, then in half again, and just started kneading and kneading.

Step 4: Add more drops into the dough ball until the color looks saturated and even. If you have a marbled look to your color then you haven't added enough dye and haven't kneaded it thoroughly enough.

Step 5: Now roll your dough into the shape you will be making. We made sticks so I just rolled the dough into a long strip.

Step 6: Now this is where you want to dip your dough into your baking soda mix. Since there is food coloring in the dough you want to dip fast AND this is important, dip the pretzel dough from lightest to darkest, that way if some of the food coloring comes off in the water it won't effect the lighter colors. I recommending dipping in this order: yellow, orange, red, blue, green, purple. Then sprinkle with salt when you are done!