Soft-Pretzel Attempt

I haven't been to Sigmund's yet (nothing that close to Lula's has a chance) and I found myself with some roasted habanero mustard from Kalustyan's that was about to expire.  Instead of eating my weight in tofu pups (which I could do), I decided to try and make my own soft pretzels.  The recipe seemed easy enough, but it was all new to me and nothing seemed right.  My yeast mixture didn't foam and my dough didn't rise.  I got some Twitter suggestions from the genuis GonePie (who I'm convinced can cook anything perfectly) and hoped for the best; this is what I wound up with.

They were certainly edible, but didn't have much of a pretzel flavor and were just too doughy for my taste.  Couple that with the fact that all of the coarse sea salt in the house had been used up on edamame and you can see that I wasn't really batting 1,000.  Oh yeah, and I totally get that they don't look much like pretzels either, so no need to point that out specifically to ridicule me (just chuckle to yourselves).  It turns out that those Auntie Anne's peeps have some kind of PhD in pretzel knotting, along with being able to waft the smell of cinnamon sugar throughout every nook & cranny of the mall.