New Year's Pretzel

Happy new year!  We've always had new years pretzels at home, but they don't seem to have spread beyond Germany/Pittsburgh, so I had to make my own this year.  I mostly followed this recipe, but have some tweaks I'd make for next year.  In particular, this recipe makes two reasonably sized pretzels, or one comedically large one -- if you only want one reasonable pretzel, halve this recipe.

Pretzel:
1 1/2 cups milk (the recipe calls for scalding -- as far as I could tell from online, scalding does nothing to non-dairy milks, so I just microwaved my almond milk until it was pretty hot)
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick butter, melted
1/2 cup warm water (yeast-rising warm -- you should be able to stick your finger in & hold it, but only barely)
1 tablespoon yeast
6 to 7 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon salt
2 eggs
vegetable oil
3ish tbsp cinnamon sugar

Toppings:
about 3 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
water
chopped/ground walnuts
maraschino cherries

Put yeast, warm water, and a dash of sugar into a bowl; set aside for five minutes to get frothy.  In a separate bowl, combine milk, sugar, and butter.  Once the yeast is frothy, mix the milk mixture, 5 cups flour, and the yeast mixture together.  Keep adding flour 1/4-1/2 cup at a time until the dough holds together -- it shouldn't be as thick as bread dough, but it should be close.  Knead just a little to make sure it's well combined (1 minute maybe).  Put it in an oiled bowl, cover with oil, cover with a damp towel, and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

Punch down dough, then roll out into a long rope.  I made one gigantic pretzel this year; it would be able to serve 10-20 people, depending on the people.  Alternatively, you could split this into two.  Either way, roll it into a long rope, and see if you can make a pretzel shape.  There should be large gaps in the pretzel, since the dough is going to double in size again.  If you can't make a gappy enough pretzel, roll the rope longer.  Once it's the right length, lay it flat (not in pretzel shape yet!) and make a deep ravine (almost all the way through) down the whole length.  Fill with cinnamon sugar -- it should be deep enough that some of it is still dry & not touching the dough.  Now, roll the rope around the long axis to swirl the cinnamon sugar through & lock most of it in (so it looks like a real rope, with the twisty spiral around it).  Take your twisty rope & make a pretzel shape on the silpat-lined tray you're going to bake it on.  Cover with the damp cloth & let it double again, another hour or so.

Remove cloth & bake at 375 for about 20 minutes.  If you stick your finger into the pretzel, it should still feel moist but not sticky/doughy.  Let cool on a wire rack.

Take about a dozen maraschino cherries out of the jar and let them dry off a bit.  A paper towel under them for about 5 minutes should do it.  I'm not crazy about this glaze -- it tastes too sugary for me -- so consider adding some extra extract or lemon zest or something to make it less like sugar.  I also added too much water, so I added ~2 tsp corn starch to try to fix it -- I'm not convinced they did anything, so I've excluded them here.  In a small bowl, combine powdered sugar, extracts, and just enough water to make it into a glaze.  It should be thick enough that it holds onto a spoon for a few seconds, but thin enough that it still drips off.  Drizzle all over the pretzel.  It'll keep flowing a little bit after you finish, so try to keep most of it on the top -- the pretty drip marks will appear on their own.  Place the cherries along the top, then sprinkle with walnuts.  Let dry a bit, then mostly cover until New Years Day.  Don't completely cover, or the glaze will get too moist and flow off; don't leave totally uncovered for more than ~12 hours, or the pretzel will get stale.

This is my comedically large pretzel.  It was delicious, though!