If you’ve never made your own bread I strongly urge you to change that immediately ?  You can start with any number of our bread recipes.  Some are quick as you like no knead doughs.  Some are the leave in a bowl while the yeast does its thing and you potter on with the rest of your day.

Herbed Beer Bread – a no knead/no prove dough also incorporating the lovely crisp flavours of Fitbeer paired with loads of fresh herbs

Oat Loaf – wholemeal flour and rolled oats give a wonderful chewy but light texture, the bread is just full of flavour.  This recipe is also a step by step guide to the perfect loaf.

Rye Bread – stout gives this bread it’s malty dark colour and flavour and is another no knead dough

Spinach Oat Rolls – hidden veggies that even the fussy eaters won’t know are there!

But till I made these I’d never made pretzels before.  I’d always been put off by the extra step of boiling, worrying that I’d muck it up and end up wasting ALL that time and all those ingredients.  But the worrying was completely unnecessary.  The light poaching is one of the easiest parts to the whole process.  Not that any part is difficult.  The kneading by hand IS hard work (unless you’ve muscles like Popeye ?) but not difficult.

I’ve used Fitbeer to make the dough – it’s alcohol free and low calorie as well as being utterly delicious with a crisp, clean flavour.

The whole recipe starts off with marinating the carrots.  Ideally you want to do this at least a couple of hours before you plan to cook them or even overnight.  There’s quite a few ingredients in the marinade so you want to make sure the flavours really get into your carrots!  You want to roast the carrots till they’re soft but still with a little bite.  Too soft and it’s too much mush in a soft bun,  too hard it’s an odd texture against the soft pretzels.  So they can take anything from 30-40 minutes dependent on how thick your carrots are!

And what you choose as your accompaniments is entirely up to you.  But it’s hotdogs so coleslaw with this vegan mayonnaise is practically mandatory!  As are roasted baby potatoes – just toss them in some oil, dried or fresh herbs and plenty of salt and pepper and roast right along with your carrots!

Those cute little paper towels in the cup are from Ora – Home and are VERY good at soaking up the extra oil from the potatoes.  We were lucky enough to be sent some a while ago and I’ve used them for so many things!  They’re great at keeping burger fillings actually in the buns as I have a habit of overfilling and trying to defy gravity! ?

If you make any of the recipes from The Cook & Him we’d LOVE to see!  Just snap a picture and share it on Instagram using #thecookandhim and tagging @thecookandhim in the photo itself (as this guarantees we’ll see your picture! ❤)

And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter for even more recipe inspiration and chat, competitions, behind the scenes and so much more!

If you make this recipe or any of the recipes from The Cook & Him we’d LOVE to see! Just snap a picture and share it on Instagram using #thecookandhim and tagging @thecookandhim in the photo itself (as this guarantees we’ll see your picture!)

And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram , Facebook or Twitter for even more recipe inspiration and chat, competitions, behind the scenes and so much more!