Pretzel

• 1. Introduction

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  The pretzel is a baked pastry shaped into a knot. At one festival in the German city of Speyer, 22,000 of them are thrown into the crowd. Today it is a salty snack sold in shopping malls and stadiums. Yet nobody agrees on who first twisted the dough, or why. Why did the church care so much about its ingredients? How did a southern German bakery staple become a major American industry? And what does a pastry with a loop in the middle have to do with luck, love and disgrace?

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• 2. Monks and Fasting

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  In the year 610, according to the most popular account, an Italian monk crossed strips of dough to resemble two hands in prayer. He wanted a reward that would keep his students motivated to learn. When the baked pieces came out, he handed them over and called them "pretiola", meaning little rewards. Another source places the invention in a monastery in southern France. German tradition offers a less pious version, in which the pretzel came from desperate bakers held hostage by local dignitaries.

  The name Brezel has rival explanations too. It may come from the Latin bracellus, a medieval term for a bracelet. Or it may come from bracchiola, which means little arms.

  By at least the 12th century, the pretzel served as an emblem of bakers in southern German areas, and formerly of their guilds. A 12th-century illustration from the Alsace region, now part of France, may hold the earliest picture of one. It shows the banquet of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus in the Hortus deliciarum.

  Christians observing Lent were forbidden eggs, lard and dairy products such as milk and butter. A pretzel made from nothing but flour and water broke none of those rules. The church saw religious meaning in both the ingredients and the shape. Over time, pretzels became linked with both Lent and Easter. On Easter morning people hid them, much as eggs are hidden today. They stayed especially tied to fasting and to prayers before Easter.

  A painting by Job Berckheyde, who lived from 1630 to 1693, dates from around 1681. It shows pretzels hung on sticks that project upward from a central column. The loops may therefore have been practical, letting bakers display their stock this way. Finnish round flatbread called ruisreikäleipä has a hole in the middle for a similar reason. Its loaves hung on poles suspended just below the kitchen ceiling.

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• 3. Lye and Salt

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  A dip in washing soda or lye gives the traditional pretzel its distinctive skin and flavor, and the Maillard reaction in the oven does the rest. Salt is the most common topping. Others include mustard, cheeses, sugar, chocolate, cinnamon, sweet glazing, seeds and nuts. Spundekäs, a regional specialty, was designed to go along with pretzels. Soft pretzels should be eaten shortly after they are made, while hard-baked ones keep for a long time.

  In Bavaria, a lye pretzel accompanies a main dish such as Weisswurst sausage. The same dough and the same lye and salt treatment produce Laugenbrötchen, Laugenstangen, Laugencroissants and Laugenbrot. These are lye rolls, sticks, croissants and loaves. In lower Bavaria, unglazed white pretzels sprinkled with salt and caraway seeds remain popular.

  Typical Swabian pretzels have very thin arms and a fat belly with a split, and they carry a higher fat content. The thick belly makes them easier to slice for sandwiches. Bavarian pretzels keep thicker arms so they do not bake to a crisp, and they contain very little fat.

  Many bakeries slice a pretzel horizontally, butter it and sell it as a Butterbrezel, sometimes with cold meats or cheese. Popular toppings include sesame, poppy, sunflower, pumpkin and caraway seeds, melted cheese and bacon bits. Some bakeries use whole wheat, rye or spelt flour. Across the Upper German dialects the pretzel goes by names such as Breze, Brezn, Bretzel, Kringel, Silserli and Sülzerli. In southern Germany, Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, it is a bread, a side dish or a snack, baked for the same day. Oversized versions are often sold at fairs and beer festivals.

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• 4. Feasts and Festivals

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  On the 1st of January, people in some southern German areas give each other lightly sweetened yeast pretzels for good luck. These New Year's pretzels come in different sizes and can measure 50 cm across or more. Children sometimes visit their godparents to fetch theirs. On the 1st of May, love-struck boys used to paint a pretzel on the door of the person they adored. An upside-down pretzel would have signaled disgrace.

  In Catholic areas such as Austria, Bavaria and parts of Swabia, bakers make a Palm pretzel for Palm Sunday. Sizes range from 30 cm up to 1 m, and a big one can weigh up to 2.5 kg. A Palm Sunday tradition dating back to 1533 is the outdoor pretzel market, the Brezgenmarkt, in the Hungerbrunnen Valley near Heldenfingen.

  Luxembourg holds a festival called Pretzel Sunday on Laetare Sunday, the fourth Sunday in Lent. Boys give their girlfriends pretzels or cakes in pretzel form, and the size shows how much he likes her. A girl who wants to raise his attention gives him a decorated egg at Easter. In leap years the custom is reversed, and it also survives in some areas of the Swabian Alb. In Rhenish Hesse and the Palatinate, people parade big pretzels mounted on colorfully decorated poles.

  During Lent in Biberach, townspeople favor Lent pretzels, which are briefly boiled in water before baking and then sprinkled with salt. Schloss Burg is renowned for a 200-year-old specialty, the Burger pretzel, whose texture and flavor resemble rusk or zwieback. A local story says the recipe came in 1795 from a grateful Napoleonic soldier whose wounds a baker's family had treated. Burg also has a monument to pretzel bakers and an 18 km route called the Pretzel Hiking Trail.

  In Upper Franconia, the anise pretzel is typical. The town of Weidenberg celebrates Pretzel weeks during the carnival season, serving anise pretzels with cooked meat and horseradish or with roast. In Lübeck, a 500-year-old guild of boatmen on the Stecknitz Canal holds its January meeting under the name Kringelhöge, or Pretzelfun. About 200 people attend a breakfast with beer, a Mass in Lübeck Cathedral and songs by a children's choir. Once the choir children came from an orphanage and were very poor, so each received a Kringel as a reward. Today they come from schools, and they still get the pretzels.

  Osnabrück marks the anniversary of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 with a hobby horse race for grade-four children, who receive a sweet pretzel at the finish. The city seal of Nörten, from around 1550, shows two facing lions holding a pretzel. Speyer calls itself the pretzel town. Its Brezelfest runs from Friday to Tuesday around the second weekend of July, draws around 300,000 visitors and is the largest beer festival in the Upper Rhine region. More than 100 bands, floats and clubs join the parade, and a fountain on the market square shows a boy selling pretzels. In Munich in 2003 and 2004, bakers made Peace Pretzels for a UNICEF charity event, shaped like a peace symbol instead of the usual loop.

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• 5. Across the Atlantic

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  In the late 18th century, southern German and Swiss German immigrants brought the pretzel to North America. They became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch. In time, many handmade pretzel bakeries dotted the central Pennsylvania countryside, and the pretzel's popularity spread.

  Southeastern Pennsylvania, with its large population of German background, is considered the birthplace of the American pretzel industry. Pennsylvania produces 80% of the nation's pretzels. The annual American pretzel industry is worth over $1.2 billion, and the average American eats about 1.5 lb a year. The average Philadelphian eats about twelve times as many.

  In the 20th century, soft pretzels became popular far beyond Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, Chicago and New York grew renowned for them. Mass production methods made pretzels more plentiful, and new points of sale put them in schools, convenience stores, grocery stores, movie theaters, arenas, concert halls and stadiums. Before that, street vendors sold them on corners from wooden cases enclosed in glass. In Philadelphia the S-shaped soft pretzel, often served with brown mustard, became part of the city's cuisine. Many people there treat it as a quick meal at school, at work or at home.

  During the 1900s, Philadelphians used slender pretzel sticks as an accompaniment to ice cream or crumbled them on top. The mix of cold, sweet and salty was popular for years and eventually led to an ice cream cone that tastes like a pretzel. American pretzels now come with yogurt, chocolate, strawberry, mustard, cinnamon sugar and cheese coatings, among others. Chocolate-covered hard pretzels are popular at Christmas as gifts. Mars, Incorporated makes Pretzel M&M's, a small pretzel covered in milk chocolate and a candy shell. Auntie Anne's and Wetzel's Pretzels, also known as Pretzel Time, sell soft pretzels in shopping malls.

  In 2003, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell declared the 26th of April National Pretzel Day, to recognize the pretzel's importance to the state's history and economy. Philly Pretzel Factory stores give each customer a free pretzel that day. A privately run Pretzel Museum opened in Philadelphia in 1993 and is now defunct. In Altoona, the Benzel's company calls its product a "bretzel", partly for the alliteration and partly as a nod to its German heritage.

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• 6. Hard Pretzels and Machines

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  The Sturgis bakery in Lititz, Pennsylvania, became the first commercial hard pretzel bakery in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. Hard pretzels were born there, not in Germany. Snack versions come as loops, braids, letters, little pretzels or sticks about 3 mm thick and 12 cm long. A thicker stick, around 1.5 cm across, is called a Bavarian pretzel or a pretzel rod in the United States. Kept in an airtight container, these hard pretzels stayed durable, which made them easy to sell in convenience stores. They have since become a popular snack in many countries.

  The Anderson Pretzel Factory in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was founded in 1889. It now calls itself the world's largest, producing 65 tons of hard pretzels daily. Large-scale production took off in the first half of the 1900s, and most of all between 1930 and 1950. In 1935, the Reading Pretzel Machinery Company in Reading, Pennsylvania, introduced the first automatic hard pretzel twisting machine.

  In 1949, American Machine and Foundry Co. of New York City developed the pretzel bender. The machine rolled and tied crispy baked pretzels at 50 a minute, more than twice as fast as skilled hand twisters. It then carried them through baking and salting.

  Soft pretzels got their own landmarks. In 1963, Joseph Nacchio of the Federal Pretzel Baking Company baked the largest soft pretzel of its time for the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It weighed 40 pounds and measured 5 feet across. Federal Pretzel Baking Company later produced the first machine-made stamped cut soft pretzel, in 1978.

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• 7. Pretzel City, USA

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  Freeport, Illinois, sits about 100 miles outside Chicago. In 1869, a German immigrant named John Billerbeck established the first Billerbeck Bakery there, selling German style pretzels to suit the many breweries in town. Prohibition shut down the breweries, and pretzel sales declined. The city never lost its pretzel pride, and for more than 100 years Freeport has called itself Pretzel City, USA. Its high school mascot is the Pretzel, and the football stadium is named Pretzel Field.

  Local citizens launched Freeport's first Pretzel Festival in 2003. Contestants are crowned Pretzel Prince and Princess. A mascot called Pretzel Bill, a name taken from the Billerbeck Bakery, dresses as a 6-foot walking, talking pretzel who hands out pretzels from floats. The municipal government has also adopted a pretzel logo as its trademark.

  Philadelphia honors the pretzel in stone and landscape. In 2004, the Philadelphia Recreation Department renamed Manayunk Park, on the 4300 block of Silverwood Street, as Pretzel Park. The redesigned park has pretzel-like looped pathways and a statue in the shape of a pretzel, sculpted by Warren C. Holzman.

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• 8. Pretzels Around the World

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  In Hungary, the pretzel is called perec. It is a softer variant of the German pastry, usually eaten with cheese or with salt and syrup baked on top. Poland has Paluszki, pretzel sticks that people often eat alongside beer. In Romania, covrigi are a variety of pretzel and a very common street food. In Sweden, the small pretzels called kringlor are often covered with chocolate.

  The pretzel dance move was part of swing dancing in the 1920s. In the early 1990s, Spandex produced a pretzel bikini, a variant of the sling swimsuit. It is a haltered maillot made from Lycra that crisscrosses the front and fastens at the waistline. These swimsuits became most popular on the beaches of Europe, including Saint-Tropez, Marbella, Mykonos and Ibiza.

  A circulating internet video shows a press conference by US president George W. Bush in January 2002. He recalls choking on a pretzel and advises: "When you're eating pretzels, chew before you swallow. Listen to your mother."

  The knot even turned up in video games. In SNK's Fatal Fury series and its successor, The King of Fighters, the character Geese Howard has a Super Special Move called Raging Storm. It needs an intricate input of down-back, a half-circle backward, then down-forward. The path traced on the controller resembles a pretzel, so the fighting game community calls it the pretzel motion.

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