Snowed in so time to make comfort food. I used Alton Brown's recipe ( http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe.html)
First, these are beautiful! Phil_M and I love pretty much all of AB's applications (we do have 4 of his cookbooks). Secondly, I just recently had an adventure with this recipe, having made it a few times before.
I'm big into whole grains and I make all our bread from scratch, so I have lots of whole wheat flour on hand and prefer it to white flour in most everything. Also, Phil_M just washed his first batch of yeast, so I was eager to use it in multiple recipes. Naturally, I put the two together to attempt to make a batch of pretzels. After an hour and a half, the dough had not risen one iota in bulk fermentation...partially due to heavy whole grains, partially due to my complete lack of experience with fresh yeast...etc. I even had it sitting in the dehydrator for warmth in the winter. So, I googled how to revive "dud" dough, and found the following advice: take the dud dough and mix it with the water, sugar, salt, and twice the yeast called for in the original recipe. Mix well, then proceed as usual with the rest of the ingredients and method for a single recipe (essentially doubling it). I used all-purpose flour this time around, the dough rose beautifully, and I ended up with a ton of rich brown, 50% whole wheat pretzels!