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Believe it or not, the pretzel capital of the world is not in Munich or Würzburg, but rather in the small Pennsylvania city of Reading. In the 1700s, German immigrants who moved to Pennsylvania brought with them a love of soft, lye-boiled, hand-twisted breads. These immigrants settled in areas like Lititz and Lancaster, where early bakers laid the foundation for large-scale commercial pretzel making.
According to the Berks History Center, Julius Sturgis opened a commercial pretzel bakery in Lititz, near Reading, in 1861, widely credited with being the first. However there are also reports that a man named Benjamin Lichtenthaler built the first such bakery in 1860, or that a baker named John Sauermilch set up shop even earlier, around 1846…