Twisted in Lititz

Hi Blog! Today is Wednesday, April 22, 2015. All of the maintenance items on the truck and RV have been taken care of. After bibbling around the campground this morning, we decided to head over to Lititz, Pennsylvania. As Lititz was voted "Coolest Small Town in America" by Budget Traveler, we though it was worth a visit. Turns out there is an Appalachian Brewing Company pub in town, so that made it a done deal.

After sampling some brews and eating a scrumptious lunch, we headed over to the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery on Main Street. Founded in 1861, the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery is the first commercial pretzel bakery in America. If you take the tour of the original bakery, you get lessons in pretzel twisting. How can we resist? Time to get twisted in Lititz. Dave plans to make a pretzel this big:

After paying a nominal fee and checking out the merchandise in the gift shop, it was soon time for our tour. This diorama give you the idea of old time pretzel baking.

These are the actual ovens used by Julius Sturgis back in 1861. Soft pretzels were all the rage back in the 1800s, but Julius Sturgis discovered that if you let the soft pretzels sit at a lower temperature for a couple hours they dry out and get hard and crunchy. He loved these left over pretzels. He tried to convince his boss that there was a market in hard crunchy pretzels, but he wouldn't hear of it. It took Julius a few years to save up the money to build his own bakery just for pretzels.

Before making a hard pretzel, you first have to make a soft one. We were all given a lump of dough and proceeded to roll it out.

After a few instructions, we crossed, twisted and folded to make the "classic" pretzel design. According to the History of Science and Technology, by Bryan Bunch and Alexander Hellemans, "[in 610 A.D.,] an Italian monk invents pretzels as a reward to children who learn their prayers. He calls the strips of baked dough, folded to resemble arms crossing the chest, 'pretiola' ("little rewards")".

Here we are with our "little rewards." We are now Official Pretzel Twisters. We have the certificate to prove it. Can you guess who made which pretzel?

After learning all about historic pretzel making, we got a look at an early 1950's-era automated pretzel twister.

Nowadays, pretzels are made by forcing the dough through molds. The twists are gone. However, the flavor still remains. Sturgis still has some employees on staff making pretzels by hand. They don't use the brick ovens anymore, since the extreme heat causes the historic building to expand and contract. They are using electric ovens to bake these soft pretzels. Here is the booty we plan to bring up to Toronto with us on Thursday:

We picked up the Jalapeno Pretzels especially for Weina. We know she likes things hot and spicy. We thought William would like the horse-and-buggy version; and who doesn't like cheese pretzels? Unfortunately, there will be no soft pretzels by the time we get to Toronto. We need something to fuel the 8 hour drive!