By Sarah Kauzmann for The Montgomery News | August 26 2026
If you have an excellent memory and have been reading my articles since 2019, you may recall I shared a hot buttered pretzel recipe in the April 2019 issue. I thought it was high time to rehash my love of soft pretzels and share a classic pretzel recipe and a few bonus stories.
Homemade soft pretzels
To recap what I learned, pretzels have no clear origin story. Some say they were created as rewards from Italian monks to children who learned their prayers correctly, others claim they come from Greece and are related to the Greek ring bread which was served at communion. Others still claim we owe Germany thanks for inventing them since the earliest drawn depiction of a pretzel appears in a 12th century German medieval manuscript.
Regardless of who invented them, pretzels have come a long way since ancient times. When you really think about it, there are loads of varieties when it comes to pretzels, not just in flavor but in shape, size, and texture. What version appears in your brain when you think of a pretzel? Is it a soft pretzel in NYC? Or a bag of small crunchy pretzels from the grocery store, whether salted or covered in cinnamon sugar? Maybe it’s pretzel sticks or the massive Bavarian pretzel you had at a German beer garden and dipped in a beer cheese sauce. There really seems to be a style of pretzel to match pretty much any mood.
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Last year, I did a day trip to Lancaster County, PA with a friend of mine and had two very different pretzel experiences. We started at the Lancaster Central Market where we tried loads of different goodies from delicious coffee and a variety of cheeses, to hand pies and fudge, to pickles and, of course, Amish made pretzels! Fresh made, soft as can be, lathered in hot butter, and topped with coarse salt. They melt in your mouth. Our pretzel adventures didn’t stop there though! We ventured over to nearby Letitz, PA to take a tour of the Julius Sturgis Pretzel Bakery which was founded in 1861. Fun fact: this was the first commercial pretzel factory opened in the United States.
On our tour, we had a lesson on pretzel-twisting and walked through the original pretzel kitchen (below) where they showed us the long paddles and even deeper ovens where they used to bake the pretzels. Nowadays, they have a large factory in Reading, PA where they make their packaged hard pretzels that are sold across the country. However, the soft pretzels they sell in their original shop are still made fresh daily in-house using the original recipe by Julius Sturgis!
Now I’m not totally pretzel obsessed but there is something extra delicious about a fresh-out-of-the-oven pretzel. Plus, they are a lot of fun to twist and shape!
Sarah Kauzmann, MHS ’12, Lehigh Univ. Masters ’17, has been baking since she was old enough to hold a spoon. She is the owner/operator of pipitsbakery.com
