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.”
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