Soft Pretzel Buns

I'm in a cooking club, this month's theme was "One Pot Meals".  I made sloppy joes, and I planned to serve them on soft pretzel buns from Costco (delicious!) BUT, Costco was sold out, so I had to make them myself.  Which means that I totally cheated on the "One Pot Meal" theme...oh well.  These soft pretzel buns were a HIT!  The recipe was adapted from King Arthur Flour, but I made a few adjustments.  Cheers!

Soft Pretzel Buns

Ingredients:
1 3/4 cup warm water
1/4 cup not-fat milk
2 T butter, softened
3/4 tsp. salt
4 3/4 cup all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp. (or 1 packet) instant yeast

Water Bath:
2 quarts water
1 T. Salt
1/4 cup baking sodas

Topping:
2 T. butter, melted
large grain salt

Put all ingredients into the bowl of an electric mixer with the bread hook attachment.  Combine and knead until all ingredients are well mixed, and the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl, about 5-8 minutes.  Cover the bowl of the mixer with plastic wrap and set aside for dough to rise until doubled in size, about 1 hour.
Get a large rimmed baking sheet, and spray with cooking spray.  Preheat oven to 200 degrees.  Remove the dough from the bowl and shape into one large ball.  Cut the ball of dough into 16 wedges (similar to how you would cut a pizza).  Take each wedge and roll it in your hands to make bun sized rolls, about the size of your palm.  Place each roll onto the greased cookie sheet. When all the dough pieces have been shaped and placed on the baking sheet, then put the baking sheet into the oven and let rise.

While the buns are rising, prepare your water bath.  Put water, salt and baking soda into a large sauce pan, and bring to a boil.  When the water is boiling , remove rolls from oven.  Increase oven temp to 400 degrees.  Gently place 4 rolls at a time in the boiling water.  Boil for 30 seconds on each side, remove from water and place back onto baking sheet.
After all the rolls have been boiled, brush with melted butter and then sprinkle with coarse salt.  Then, with a sharp knife or kitchen scissors, cut a large "X" into the top of each roll.  Bake rolls for 20-25 minutes.

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