exist. There’s one that says monks made the strangely shaped bread to allow for pilgrims to easily hang it on their walking staffs. An alternative claims a German king decreed loaves of bread be made in a way to allow the sun to shine through them three different ways. Why he wanted this is unclear. Whichever you believe, the pretzel was a popular purchase at the local marketplace in Germany by the Middle Ages. At that point it was known by an Old High German word, bretzitella, and then brezel (or bretzel , depending on who you believe) before transforming into its modern name.
The Christian storytelling surrounding the pretzel doesn’t end there. It’s said that pretzels saved Vienna from Muslim invaders in 1529. The Ottoman Turks were laying siege to the European capital and devised a plan to dig tunnels underneath the sturdy city walls in the middle of the night. What the Turks didn’t know was bakers labored through the night cooking pretzels in order to have fresh bread ready for morning customers. These men supposedly heard the below-ground commotion and alerted authorities. As a result, the Turks were repelled, preventing Muslim rule in Europe.
This romantic recounting is very unlikely. It’s true that the Ottomans tried to tunnel under the walls in order to lay mines to destroy the city’s protection, but, according to the book Besieged: An Encyclopedia of Great Sieges from Ancient Times to the Present , it was an Ottoman deserter who warned the Austrians about the digging plans.
So what ties between the pretzel and the Christian faith are worthy of our devotion? Some in Europe, along with members of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States, have put pretzels on Christmas trees as decorations and hidden them as prizes at Easter (a la Easter eggs). They have also been used at wedding ceremonies, where the baked good is broken apart in a wishbone-like game. As for the rest of it, I leave it to Dan Brown to figure out how to weave it all together in The Pretzel Code .
Twinkies: Strawberry afterthought
Devoted fans of the ubiquitous Twinkie should give praise to the ever-so-wholesome strawberry for the confection’s invention. It was the strawberry’s relatively short season for freshness that inspired the spongy American icon.
In 1930 James Dewar was working as a Hostess bakery manager in Schiller Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Times were tight and the company wanted to come up with a low-priced product that would appeal to Depression-starved consumers. Cue the strawberry. Dewar’s factory used them as part of a little finger cake product they were selling. But the problem was strawberries would only stay sweet for six weeks so the cakes came and went quickly. As a result, the bakery molds used for the strawberry treats sat idle for most of the year.
Looking to maximize those pans, Dewar, a longtime bakery man who entered the business in 1920 as a wagon driver, concocted the Twinkie. He named it after a billboard he saw for a company called Twinkle Toe Shoes on a trip to St. Louis. (“I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids,” he said.) The new cakes, which went on the market at a nickel for two, weren’t like the yellow wonders we taste today. Dewar originally kept with the fruit theme, creating a creamy banana filling. The key: unlike strawberries, fresh bananas could be found throughout the year.
The Twinkie was an immediate success, but it needed another unexpected turn to reach its full height of popularity. During World War II rationing made it impossible to source enough bananas to keep the production lines going. With little choice, Hostess was forced to come up with an alternative—the creamy vanilla-flavored insides used today. After the war, there was no need to return to the banana flavor as the new center proved more popular than its predecessor. Nowadays some 500 million Twinkies are sold annually. As for the banana cream, it has been used in limited runs
The Christian storytelling surrounding the pretzel doesn’t end there. It’s said that pretzels saved Vienna from Muslim invaders in 1529. The Ottoman Turks were laying siege to the European capital and devised a plan to dig tunnels underneath the sturdy city walls in the middle of the night. What the Turks didn’t know was bakers labored through the night cooking pretzels in order to have fresh bread ready for morning customers. These men supposedly heard the below-ground commotion and alerted authorities. As a result, the Turks were repelled, preventing Muslim rule in Europe.
This romantic recounting is very unlikely. It’s true that the Ottomans tried to tunnel under the walls in order to lay mines to destroy the city’s protection, but, according to the book Besieged: An Encyclopedia of Great Sieges from Ancient Times to the Present , it was an Ottoman deserter who warned the Austrians about the digging plans.
So what ties between the pretzel and the Christian faith are worthy of our devotion? Some in Europe, along with members of the Pennsylvania Dutch in the United States, have put pretzels on Christmas trees as decorations and hidden them as prizes at Easter (a la Easter eggs). They have also been used at wedding ceremonies, where the baked good is broken apart in a wishbone-like game. As for the rest of it, I leave it to Dan Brown to figure out how to weave it all together in The Pretzel Code .
Twinkies: Strawberry afterthought
Devoted fans of the ubiquitous Twinkie should give praise to the ever-so-wholesome strawberry for the confection’s invention. It was the strawberry’s relatively short season for freshness that inspired the spongy American icon.
In 1930 James Dewar was working as a Hostess bakery manager in Schiller Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Times were tight and the company wanted to come up with a low-priced product that would appeal to Depression-starved consumers. Cue the strawberry. Dewar’s factory used them as part of a little finger cake product they were selling. But the problem was strawberries would only stay sweet for six weeks so the cakes came and went quickly. As a result, the bakery molds used for the strawberry treats sat idle for most of the year.
Looking to maximize those pans, Dewar, a longtime bakery man who entered the business in 1920 as a wagon driver, concocted the Twinkie. He named it after a billboard he saw for a company called Twinkle Toe Shoes on a trip to St. Louis. (“I shortened it to make it a little zippier for the kids,” he said.) The new cakes, which went on the market at a nickel for two, weren’t like the yellow wonders we taste today. Dewar originally kept with the fruit theme, creating a creamy banana filling. The key: unlike strawberries, fresh bananas could be found throughout the year.
The Twinkie was an immediate success, but it needed another unexpected turn to reach its full height of popularity. During World War II rationing made it impossible to source enough bananas to keep the production lines going. With little choice, Hostess was forced to come up with an alternative—the creamy vanilla-flavored insides used today. After the war, there was no need to return to the banana flavor as the new center proved more popular than its predecessor. Nowadays some 500 million Twinkies are sold annually. As for the banana cream, it has been used in limited runs
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