Game Day!

There’s something about Sundays that just feel sad and empty when football isn’t in season. My family loves this time of year——chili in the crockpot, apple crisp ready to go in the oven, and football playing on the TV all day. Sunday’s revolve around food——and if I’m being honest, I think the main reason I watch football is for the all the food. Wings, pizza, chips, pretzels…it really makes a bunch of guys crashing into each other while chasing a ball so much more enjoyable to watch.

When my daughter had to change her diet to gluten-free, a lot of our favorite game day snacks went away as quickly as the Bills seem to always give away their season (I’m kiddddddddddddddding, we love our Bills——and they won today—-it’s totally going to be our year). Our favorite game day snack to make was soft pretzels——she loves cinnamon sugar on hers, and I like mine dipped in honey mustard. We’ve tried making them a few times since her diagnosis and they always fell short. They had kind of a spongy texture, plus as soon as they would cool down, they became tough and almost impossible to chew. I started trying to adapt the recipe I’d used before and just swap out the regular flour with gluten-free all purpose flour.

Didn’t work.

Then I read something about using apple cider vinegar in the pretzels. That it would help with the chewy texture.

Also didn’t work.

But never fear——thanks to a beautfiul thing called “the internet” I continued my quest for an edible gluten-free soft pretzel recipe. After trying a few other reputable sites and coming up with so-so results, I finally found the keeper. As if it could have been any more obvious, since the recipe came off the site of brand of flour that I was using. Really, not sure why it took me so many tries to actually find it, but whatever…that’s not the point. The point is….you should do yourself a favor, skip the other recipes and try the Gluten-Free Soft Pretzels by King Arthur Baking. They were so simple, but SO perfect. Chewy exterior, the right soft chewy texture in the middle of the pretzel…which was still true even when they cooled down. We didn’t need any fancy ingredients other than the gluten-free flour and xanthan gum (used to give the chewy texture)….which, if you’re trying out gluten-free baking you probably already have both of those ingredients on hand. And honestly, except that my dough took a little longer to double in size since it wasn’t in a warm enough spot, it was pretty quick too.

Trying to keep her blood sugar in mind, I figured that we would do pretzel bites instead of the huge soft pretzels. I figured it’d be less carbs overall when cut into little pieces. Sounds about as dumb as that line in clueless where her friend says “if you cut it up into smaller pieces it has less calories.” But at the time that’s where my head was going. In hindsight, this was a total mistake because I quickly lost count of how many pretzel bites she was going back for, so I think it would’ve been way easier to estimate a bolus if I knew she was eating one giant pretzel, vs. ? many pretzel bites. Live and learn I guess….but we both watched the game together happily snacking on these, plus some chicken wings that my husband smoked in his Traeger today.

Sounds like a win to me!