‘Oktoberfest season’ highlights the pretzel: Is it a Southern delicacy?

Is the pretzel a “Southern food?” The folks who run the Southern Kitchen social media site in Atlanta, say: “Yes” – especially if you’re serving soft pretzels with pimento cheese.

For a unique twist, try the pretzel and pimento cheese fondue concoction offered by Tupelo Honey Café, a restaurant chain based in Asheville, N.C. Owner Stephen Frabitore said the dish is “a fun, entertaining and brag-worthy party hors d’oeuvre or, if paired with a simple salad, a comforting and casual supper by the fireplace.”

Since 2008, Tupelo Honey Café has focused on creating a “revival of Southern food and traditions rooted in the Carolina mountains,” Frabitore said. It seems to be working. Other Tupelo Honey Café restaurants in North Carolina are found in Charlotte and Raleigh. In all, the company now operates 18 restaurants in 10 states.

Pretzels are associated with the celebration of Oktoberfest, held annually in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. The beer and pretzel wing-ding lasts at least 16 days and ushers in the fall season.

Steven Musil, reporting for Microsoft News, said pretzels date back to the 7th century. “Originally a soft, squishy bread, made with a simple mixture of water, flour and salt, pretzels could be consumed when Christians were forbidden to eat eggs, lard or dairy products.”

“Italian monks offered pretzels as rewards (their shape symbolizes arms folded in prayer) to children who had learned their prayers,” Musil wrote.

Sarah Pruitt, a contributor to history.com, wrote: “Pretzels were pivotal in 1510, when Ottoman Turks attempted to invade Vienna, Austria, by digging tunnels underneath the city’s walls. Monks baking pretzels in the basement of a monastery heard the enemy’s progress and alerted the rest of the city, then helped defeat the Turkish attack.”

“As a reward, the Austrian emperor – Maximilian I – gave the pretzel bakers their own coat of arms,” she said. The bakers’ shield shows two lions grasping each end of the pretzel dough.

The pretzel shape illustrates the “Staffordshire,” a distinctive three-looped knot, which is the symbol of the County of Staffordshire in England.

In 1614, in Switzerland, couples began using the pretzel in wedding ceremonies to seal the bond of matrimony. This is the origin of the phrase “tying the knot.”

German, Swiss and Italian immigrants were responsible for bringing the pretzel to the American colony of Pennsylvania. Neighborhood bakeries would turn out loads of pretzels for eager customers waiting in line to buy them fresh out of the oven.

In the small hamlet of Lititz, Pa., the town’s baker, William H. Rauch, took in an itinerant worker for a short period of time in 1861. According to the “Legend of Lititz,” the vagabond instructed Rauch’s apprentice, Julius Sturgis, how to prepare “proper pretzels.”

Rauch granted ownership of the baker’s “secret recipe” to Sturgis, who, in turn, opened America’s first commercial pretzel bakery later in 1861 in Lititz. What Sturgis had was the golden formula to extend the “shelf life” of pretzels by hardening them to make them crunchy.

Pruitt commented that Sturgis’ hard pretzels were dagnabbitly revolutionary. “The crispy snacks lasted longer in an airtight container, allowing them to be sold farther away from the bakery itself and to stay fresh longer. Eventually, hard pretzels would come to be even more popular than their soft counterparts,” she said.

Sturgis is the oldest pretzel baking family in America. Today, the Sturgis pretzel baking operations are consolidated at a modern factory in Shillington, Pa., near Reading, about 25 miles from Lititz. At the helm of the business is Bruce Sturgis, a member of the fifth generation in the “first family of pretzels.”

The original Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery is now a Lititz landmark and a tourism attraction. The facility is open daily for tours. The admission fees are less than $4 per person.

Lititz is in Lancaster County, Pa., which cherishes its Amish and Mennonite heritage. Lititz was voted “Coolest Small Town in America” in 2013 – a year after Beaufort, N.C., claimed the crown.

A “sister-city” invite “from us to them” might include an offering of “deep-fried soft pretzels paired with a local Beaufort craft brew.”