Gluten Free Pretzel Bites!

Yet another food you've probably been craving; a good gluten free, chewy, soft pretzel. Here you go!  Necessity is the mother of invention yet again.

Thanks to Better Batter for their inspiration for this Auntie Anne's clone. I halved the recipe because I didn't want to use too much flour in case it didn't turn out. But they were wonderful! This quantity will make one cookie sheet full of pretzel bites...maybe about 25? Just a guess, I didn't count them before we ate them all.

I mixed up this dough and formed the pretzel bites before heading to bed. I put the cookie sheet of pretzel bites into the refrigerator to rise overnight. In the morning I ran the bites through the baking soda solution, and baked them. It was way easier to do it this way, than wait for them to rise.

One final note, I used the Jules flour recipe, but made my modifications to substitute Sorghum and Millet for the rice flour.  You'll see these changes reflected in the link to the flour blend recipe.  I have not tried my recipes with a rice based mix, so if you are using rice, you may have slightly different results. :)

Gluten Free Soft Pretzel Bites

1 1/4 cups warm water

1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast

1 tablespoons white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 cups Jules Gluten Free Flour mix Flour, plus some for dusting surface

2 cups Warm Water

2 tablespoons baking soda

Instructions
-Put warm water and sugar in the bowl of your electric mixer; stirring to dissolve. Sprinkle the yeast on top and stir again. Let this sit for a few minutes to make sure the yeast is active (you'll see it 'grow' and 'move').
-Add salt and half the flour and beat on high for three minutes. Dough will be very sticky (that is good). Add remaining flour (about 1 1/2 cups) and stir in. Drop it onto a generously floured surface and very gently fold over on itself a few times. You're looking for a dough that you can form with effort, but not one that you add tons of flour to because sticky dough will lend itself to a lighter end product.
-Get a piece of dough the size of a lemon and roll it out into a long roll about 1/2" diameter. Use kitchen scissors to cut into pieces about 1" long. You could also form this into a traditional pretzel shape too; make a U, cross the ends over twice and lay ends back down on top of the U.
-Lay the pretzel pieces onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, cover with plastic wrap, and put in refrigerator overnight to rise.
-In the morning pull the pan out of the refrigerator, turn on oven to 450 degrees and prepart the baking soda mixture.
-Combine 2c water and 2T baking soda mixture in small pan and bring to a boil. Turn heat on baking soda mixture down to medium, and dip pretzels into baking soda solution for about 30 seconds. After dipping in solution, lay pretzels back onto parchment lined cookie sheet. At this point you can brush with egg to get a more shiny pretzel, and/or sprinkle with coarse salt (pretzel salt or kosher salt works).
-Bake in 450 oven for about 10 minutes or until golden.
Enjoy warm with a dip of mustard, or just eat plain. :)

**My appologies for the poor quality picture.  I took it very quickly this morning on a mobile device since the camera wasn't handy.  :)