College revisited: pretzel-crusted chicken

My college celebrated its annual commencement yesterday. Not only did it make me feel incredibly old, it got me reminiscing about college, including, yes, college food. After four years, cafeteria food was really starting to get old, and my choices became slimmer and slimmer (which doesn't explain how I put on 10 pounds senior year). But there was one thing that I always loved and vowed I would remake- pretzel-crusted chicken. How did they make the pretzels so golden brown? What was that white sauce underneath the pretzels? I decided to remake it tonight, trying my best to figure out how it could have been made.

Was it the same? Eh...no. I'm pretty sure that white sauce was something else, and the pretzels weren't as dark as they were at college (which isn't a bad thing, really). But was it delicious? YES. Here's what you need:

Sea Salt
White Pepper
Parmesean cheese (Romano will work just as well, or even better)
Pretzels (duh)

Preheat oven to 425. On two boneless, skinless chicken breasts, add a coating of sea salt and a light coating of white pepper.

Spread the pepper around with the back of a spoon so it doesn't look all stripey like in the above picture.

On top of that, add a coating of Parmesean cheese.

Break up a handful of pretzels and arrange them all over the chicken.

(Hindsight tip: I should have made these a little smaller. A good idea would be to break the pretzels up fine and and a thin layer of pretzel crumbs over the cheese to make a simple breading.)

Bake in oven for 30 to 35 minutes. And there you have it...

Pretzel-crusted yummyness. I served this with boiled broccoli and "homemade" mashed potatoes. Josh and I were stuffed and filled with college flashbacks (and wishing we could forget the night we split a whole pizza and a six-pack of Killian's) (together we weigh 250 pounds. You do the math).

Topped it all off with some wine:

A good night indeed.