National Pretzel Day

Legend (widely accepted, lightly evidenced) says the pretzel was invented around 610 CE by Italian monks who shaped leftover bread dough into the form of crossed arms folded in prayer. The monks baked them and gave them to children as rewards for memorizing Bible verses. The Latin name was pretiola "little reward." The German mouth couldn't handle pretiola, so it became Brezel, which English absorbed as "pretzel."

For the next 1,000 years, pretzels spread across Europe, monasteries, bakeries, beer halls. In 1510, Viennese bakers reputedly saved their city from a Turkish siege by being up at 3 AM making pretzels, hearing the tunneling underground, and alerting the authorities. For this they were granted the right to display the pretzel on their coat of arms, which is why the symbol for bakeries in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland is still a pretzel today.

Pretzels came to America with German immigrants in the 18th century. The first U.S. commercial pretzel bakery opened in Lititz, Pennsylvania in 1861, Julius Sturgis's bakery, still operating as a museum. Hard pretzels were invented by accident around that time: a bakery apprentice overbaked a batch, they cooled into crunchy pretzels, and the shelf-stable snack food industry was born.

Pennsylvania still produces 80% of America's pretzels. Philadelphia eats more of them per capita than anywhere on Earth (12 pounds per person per year, vs. the 1.5 lb national average). National Pretzel Day was declared by Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell in 2003 and adopted nationally soon after.

Four things that make a pretzel a pretzel:

Six regional takes, same idea, wildly different pretzels: