Paleo Pretzels: When You Want a Crunch to Munch

Since we have been GAPS/PALEO/Grain-Free/whatever-we-are, I do my best to give the kids whole foods and healthy snacks of fruits and veggies. But, sometimes you just want something crunchy and well, snacky. I don’t know of any packaged PALEO pretzels. There are plenty of gluten-free pretzels on the market, but most have corn or soy or something else that isn’t so great for you. So, when I found this pretzel recipe in the Better Nutrition magazine at my health food store, I was excited to try it. I’m always excited to have something different for Christopher, who has severe autism, to eat that is also somewhat “normal.”

When I opened the back of my mini-van following my food shopping trip, one of the bags flew out in my face. Of course it was the bag the eggs, and about half of them cracked (but it could have been worse – they didn’t completely break and they stayed in the carton). So, I made a larger version of this recipe (about 2 and half times the recipe) to use up the cracked eggs. The directions below are for the actual recipe from Better Nutrition though.

Ingredients

• 10 oz. almond meal
• 2 TBS + 2 tsp coconut flour
• 1 TBS coconut butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 egg white, beaten with 1 tsp water
• 1/2 tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp sesame seeds

Directions

1.  Mix almond meal and salt in a bowl.
2.  Add in coconut butter, and rub into mixture.
3.  Stir in eggs and mix well.
4.  Add coconut flour. Knead well until a dough forms.
5. Let sit for 10 minutes.
6.  Preheat over to 350
7.  Divide dough into about 16 pieces and roll into ropes.
8.  Twist ropes into pretzel shapes and place on a baking sheet.
9.  Brush with egg while mix and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
10.  Bake until lightly browned, about 25 minutes.

This ended up being a great rainy afternoon activity for the kids. Because we had so much dough, I gave my younger son his own baking sheet to fill. My husband helped him roll his pretzel “snakes.”

Then we formed our pretzels. But, we decided not to stick to regular pretzel shapes (though there are a few traditional pretzels in there) and included pretzel sticks, rings, words, footballs, and a crazy pretzel man. Here is my pre-baked pretzel tray:

Here is C2’s:

These tasted really good (admittedly, they weren’t exactly like store-bought pretzels – but my kids never get those so they didn’t really know) and Christopher enjoyed them, which made my whole day. C2’s bigger pretzels actually came out better. So, even though they looked cute, I wouldn’t recommend making super skinny pretzel rods. Plus, it took forever to roll out their “snakes.”

The last pretzel to be eaten was our pretzel man (who I think looked a lot like a Kokopelli).