It’s not like a regular hard, chewy Philly soft pretzel.” “You have a crisp outside and a really moist inside. “It's all about the freshness,” Miller says. These pretzels come unattached and are formed in the classic pretzel shape, just like hard pretzels in a bag.Īt Miller’s Twist in Philly’s historic Reading Terminal Market, owner Roger Miller and his crew bake these rich, tender pretzels, giving them a milder alkaline dip in baking soda so that the crust stays delicate. At Amish markets from the suburbs out to Lancaster County, the pretzels are baked golden, brushed with butter and soft like a Parker House roll. | Neal Santos/Thrillistīut in the counties surrounding Philadelphia, you’ll see another kind of soft pretzel - the one the Auntie Anne’s in your local mall is trying desperately to replicate. Miller's Twist makes Amish-style pretzels stuffed with sausage, tossed in cinnamon and sugar, or simply brushed with butter. “It's a combination of ingredients, how long we proof them for, how long we chill them after the proof, and then the time and temperature of the baking - a lot of little things,” he said. Sidorick wouldn’t reveal how he gets his pretzels so light and fluffy, with a pleasantly snappy exterior, but he did walk through the process. There, second-generation baker Joe Sidorick, whose father launched the business in 1968, wakes up at 1am on weekdays to turn hundreds of pounds of dough into thousands of pretzels, destined for schools, corner stores, and neighborhood residents. Just look for the beige-colored corrugated awning with a twist of dough painted on either side. We’re known for our pretzels in this city - they really represent us.”Īnother institution is Philadelphia Soft Pretzels, tucked away on a quiet residential street in Lower Northeast Philly’s Frankford neighborhood. “Everyone talks about cheesesteaks, but everybody makes cheesesteaks now. | Neal Santos/ThrillistĪside from the fact that almost everyone can eat them (there’s no dairy, soy, or eggs in Center City’s recipe) Bonnett sees soft pretzels as a food that only Philadelphia can truly claim to be the best. “Grandfathers and great-grandfathers used to purchase from us, and whoever took over their business over, they told them where to buy from.” Philadelphia Soft Pretzels has been serving its Northeast Philly neighborhood with shiny, fluffy twists for 52 years. In that time, they’ve never advertised, but generations of families and small business owners have patronized the shop. “Word of mouth has always been our thing,” says Erika Bonnett, a manager at Center City Pretzel, which her father started 40 years ago. (It’s that same no-nonsense mentality that makes cheesesteak orders just as abrupt and effective.) Walk into the tiny alcove at the front of the massive, garage-like bakery, request pretzels, pay cash, leave. Center City’s pretzels are crusty and craggy on the outside, moistly dense and soft within - shaped in the classic Philly way to produce an ovular shape, and baked lined up in a close-set row so they stick together. There’s a good chance those pretzels Harris remembers were made by Center City Pretzel, which bakes thousands of pretzels for wholesale and retail from its storefront in South Philly’s Italian Market. It wasn't a proper big business or anything,” she said. “There were just kind of like, one guy, and you had hot dogs and pretzels. Philly native Alissa Harris remembers getting pretzels from the food carts outside Franklin Institute science museum as a kid. Where do these pretzels come from anyway? Kids carried boards of bagels on their heads throughout neighborhoods to sell their baked treats - not unlike the streetside selling you see all over Philly today. Around the turn of the 20th century, Italians ended up playing a role, taking over the city’s pretzel trade as bakers and hawkers. Weaver pinpoints the first mention of pretzels in Philadelphia to a German immigrant from Baden-Württemberg (aka bonafide pretzel country) in 1818. “The German-speaking world was and always has been a large part of the Philadelphia food story.” “You have to realize that, at one point, about one third of Philadelphia was made up of German neighborhoods,” Weaver says. The shape was associated with the Celtic deity Lugh, he says, who watched over bakeries. Germans absorbed this cultural practice as they migrated into the Rhineland from northern Europe. How did Pennsylvania become Pretzelvania?Īccording to food historian William Woys Weaver, the knotted pretzels we know today evolved from Celtic harvest knots, decoratively woven artworks made from dried and braided wheat straw.
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