by Diane Walsh

Created on: November 20, 2008

Americans love their snack food. The three most popular snacks are: potato chips, tortilla chips and pretzels. The average American consumes about 1.5 pounds of pretzels per year. I bet you are just wondering how did the pretzel come to America.

A long time ago in an Italian monastery the monks would bake bread while trying to teach local children their prayers. A monk would appear at the back door with cooked left-over bread dough. For every prayer the children remembered, he offered them a piece of bread as a pretiole. Pretiole means little gift' in Latin.

The monks living at the Italian monastery in 610 A.D. and the local Christians prayed with their arms folded across their chests, with each hand on the opposite shoulder. The monk crisscrossed the bread in the shape of a child's arms folded in prayer. The three small holes made by the shape represented the Trinity.

The pretiole was easy to make and cheap. It became very popular. The recipe was passed from monastery, to church, to village bakeries, and to Royal cooks.

The pretiole was pictured in several different locations throughout Europe. A prayer book dating 1440 used by Catharine of Cleve depicts St. Bartholomew surrounded by pretioles. Ten years later in 1450, the Germans ate pretioles on Good Friday. The puffy pretiole symbolized everlasting life and two hard-boiled eggs nestled in each of the large curves of the pretiole, represented Easter's rebirth.

During the Battle of 1510, the Turkish army was trying to capture the City of Vienna. The Turkish forces could not climb up the walls that protected the city. They decided to dig a tunnel into the city.

The Viennese pretiole bakers were working their usual shift, midnight to day break. They heard the noise made by the army digging the tunnel. They gathered all the baker and town defenders, together they stopped the army. The pretiole bakers were heroes. The Austrian Emperor honored them with their own coat of arms. The emblem today still has a pretiole in their honor.

The saying "tying the knot" originate in Switzerland in 1614. A stain glass window in a Cathedral of Berne, Switzerland shows a pretiole as the nuptial knot in a marriage of two royal families. The royal couples wish for happiness with a pretiole forming the love knot. Pretioles were thought to bring good luck, prosperity and spiritual wholeness.

The pretiole recipe continued to travel through Europe and made the passage to America. Many foreign names change the pronunciation when they

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