Pretzels:

Sudeep will be so proud of me. I made my first yeast bread today, soft pretzels. They're pretty easy, actually. the dough is just flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water. Knead about 8 minutes, then dip the pieces in a mix of water and egg, salt, let rise for 20 minutes or so, then bake for 20 minutes.

I did have some trouble though, mostly due to kitchen problems. My oven takes absolutely forever to heat up. These had to be baked at 425 (I think this is about 215 Celsius), and after 15 minutes of preheating, the oven was still at about 150 C. I had already let them rise too much waiting for the oven to be hot, so I gave up and put them in. Also, I have one smallish cookie sheet so I kind of ended up with one giant pretzel. However, I had one and it was pretty tasty, if a little too light for a true soft pretzel. Hopefully they'll still taste OK tomorrow when they aren't straight out of the oven.

And the shapes are Greek letters, because I am a giant dork. Well, the beta is kind of two giant lines and delta was too hard, but the alpha, gamma, and omega are recognisable.