Soft? Salty? What are we talking about...something that bier drinking would not be the same without... the soft pretzel.
Although the pretzel carries strong
associations to Bavaria, the origin of the pretzel possibly goes back to
Northern France or Italy. (Say what? Yes, it's true.)
Around 600AD a monk on baking duty
during Lent thought it would be a good idea to use a piece of leftover dough
and create a piece of bread that emulated the crossed-arm praying position,
popular at the time. (Guess you need to know your Catholic history.) Anyway, the inventive
monk named the new creation pretiola,
which means “little reward” in Latin. He used the pretiola as rewards for children who correctly recited
their prayers.
Over time pretiola became
a cheap and filling food that monks
handed out to those in need.
Moving
from monastery to monastery across the Alps, the pretiola
found its way into Austria and Germany where it was
linguistically corrupted to bretzel or pretzel as we know it today.
The pretzel remains a staple at any
German restaurant, and certainly during Oktoberfest celebrations. (A long way from the mouths of well-behaved babes to accomplished boot drinkers.) In Munich Brotfrauen (bread women) sell
pretzels to the bier full partiers. The bread women sell upwards of 400,000
Bretzeln (pretzels auf Deutsch) each year.
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