Absolutely amazing. I'm writing this while waiting for my second batch to ferment. They came out so incredibly well that I couldn't stop thinking about them all day.
I followed The Fresh Loaf's recipe and fermented for 1.5 hours. I also used about a tablespoon of baking soda in my boiling water bath. Shaping the pretzels was pretty much a failure: I probably had dough rolls too fat. I also couldn't figure out how to get the ends to stick together properly. The result of all this is that pretty much all of my pretzels unpretzeled themselves when dunked into the boiling water.
The result was delicious beyond belief. The crust was chewy and slightly tough and had plenty of flavor. The crumb was tasty and actually pretty fluffy due to the thickness of the dough rolls. I'm making my 2nd batch less than 24 hours later and will try some without topping salt to get a better taste of the crust. I'll be making these for a while.