.png)
.webp)
Pretzel’s history evolved from medieval European monastery treats to a global snack favorite.
Back in 7th century Italy, a monk shaped bread dough into knots, mimicking children's crossed arms during prayer.
He gave these twisted breads, called "pretiola" (little rewards), to students who memorized their prayers.
While historical records cannot confirm these exact events, this origin story persists in lore to this day.
Food historians have been able to trace the word "pretzel" via various language changes.
The Latin word "bracellae" — meaning "little arms" — appears in early texts about twisted bread.
This name matched the pretzel's physical form: a loop of dough with ends that curl like bent arms in prayer.
As the bread spread through medieval Europe, German bakers renamed "bracellae" into "bretzel," and later "pretzel."
Medieval Christians shaped pretzels into twisted loops of dough during Lent, when their faith banned eggs, butter, and meat from their meals.
Bakers mixed flour, water, and salt—the only permitted ingredients—into stiff ropes, crossed them into prayer-like knots, and baked them until the crust turned brown and crisp.
Workers, farmers, and merchants filled pretzels in cloth sacks, eating them between sunrise and sunset.
It was especially common to break their 40 day fast with pretzels.
Medieval manuscript artists painted pretzels at the Last Supper table in several surviving religious texts.
These twisted bread loops appear alongside the more traditional bread and wine in illuminations from the 13th-15th centuries.
The presence of pretzels in these religious artworks reveals how medieval artists merged their daily food culture with biblical scenes.
Medieval bakers hung pretzels on wooden poles that jutted from their shop windows.
The pretzel's twisted loop served both symbol and sales strategy.
The loops allowed rows of fresh pretzels to face the street.
Passersby could spot, select, and purchase these dangling breads without stepping inside.
This helped pretzels become a common street food in Europe during this era that continues today.
In 1850, baker Julius Sturgis pulled a batch of pretzels from his brick oven in Lititz, Pennsylvania.
The pretzels had baked longer than usual, transforming the soft dough into crisp, golden twists.
This accident (or perhaps intentional experiment) created the first documented hard pretzel in America.
A competing origin traces to German immigrants who arrived in Pennsylvania during the 1840s.
These bakers brought specific techniques: cooking pretzels twice, first boiling the dough in water, then baking it until it crackled.
They sold these pretzels from wooden barrels in the streets of Pennsylvania.
Their dry, crisp texture meant they lasted weeks without spoiling.
Workers packed them in metal lunch pails, soldiers carried them in canvas bags, and families stored them in tin containers.
Pretzels durability helped them become one America’s first popular snack food.
By 1850, twenty-four pretzel bakeries operated in Philadelphia proper, their brick ovens warming winter mornings.
This network of family bakeries transformed Philadelphia into America's pretzel hub, producing 80% of the country's pretzels by 1900.
Today, Philadelphians still eat twelve times more pretzels per person than any other U.S. city.
In the 1800s, bars across America transformed the pretzel from religious symbol to profitable snack.
The twisted dough's salt crystals sparked thirst in drinkers, pushing them to order more beer.
Bartenders embraced pretzels because they could store baskets of them on shelves, ready to serve without heating, cutting, or plating.
During World War I (1914-1918), American pretzel bakers watched their sales drop as customers avoided German-associated foods.
The 1920 implementation of Prohibition dealt them another blow by closing the saloons where pretzels had been a bar snack staple.
However, pretzel sales soon climbed about again after the war ended.
Pretzel makers now craft variations that bear little resemblance to the original twisted dough.
In Japanese convenience stores, sweet pretzels line the shelves next to traditional rice snacks—some coated in matcha powder, others filled with strawberry cream.
American shoppers reach for bags of bite-sized pretzels draped in milk chocolate.
Frito-Lay's manufacturing plants now produce 500,000 pretzels per day, packaging them in foil bags that stock grocery stores from Miami to Manila.
From German bakeries to Asian snack aisles, bakers and food scientists continue reshaping this wheat-based snack.
.png){kind=logo}
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)