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OK, so this post isn't about holy breads – as in the Eucharist. It's about breads with holes. And I don't mean little pockets of air as in sourdough bread. I mean breads that are shaped like rings, wreaths or knots, with the dough surrounding one or more holes. You know, bagels, pretzels and the like.
In a few shopping malls and other places in Warsaw you can find stands like the one pictured here, selling what the sign claims to be ''krakowskie precle'', or "Cracow pretzels". Intriguingly, [http://krakowskieprecle.pl/o-firmie the company that distributes them in Warsaw] proudly boats that these "pretzels" are shipped each morning straight from Mr. Czaja's bakery in Cracow. But if we take a look at [http://malafirma.pl/piekarnia/pieczywo1.html Mr. Grzegorz Czaja's bakery website, ] we'll see that what he bakes there is not pretzels, but something called ''obwarzanki'' (pronounced ''awb-vah-{{small|ZHAHN}}-kee''). It seems as though the ''obwarzanki'' magically turned into pretzels the moment they arrive in Warsaw! Can we chalk it up to merely yet another linguistic difference between Cracovian and Warsovian Polish? Or is there a more profound distinction between pretzels and ''obwarzanki''?
"Pretzels, "bagels" and "''obwarzanki''" are all used by both tourists and native Cracovians alike to refer to the specifically Cracovian bread which "takes the form of an oval with a hole in the middle" and whose "surface is formed by strands of dough twisted into a spiral".<ref>Description of the product according to: [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:52010XC0216(01) Publication of an application pursuant to Article 6(2) of Council Regulation (EC) No 510/2006 on the protection of geographical indications and designations of origin for agricultural products and foodstuffs (2010/C 38/08), EC No: PL-PGI-005-0674,] Official Journal of the European Union</ref> Although unique to Cracow, it nonetheless belongs to the great diverse family of holey breads. So let's take a look at the bigger picture now.
== Common Ancestors ==
[[File:Martwa natura z ciambellami.JPG|thumb|upright=.6|Cristoforo Munari (1667–1720), ''Still life with a watermelon and ciambelle'']]
Another bread with a long history, which, this time for sure, is made in the shape of elongated rings, is the Middle Eastern ''ka'ak''. These breads get a mention in the Talmud,<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', p. 7</ref> so they must have been known at least as early as the 6th century CE. Unlike the overly simple ''buccellatumbuccellata'', made only of flour, salt and butter, ''ka'ak'' are made from leavened dough. What's interesting is that the leavening agent used here is not yeast, but fermented chickpea.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = Food Composition Tables for the Near East
| url = https://books.google.de/books?id=YHvfetM9gcUC&pg=PA229
[[File:Ponti, Carlo (ca. 1823-1893) - Venditore.jpg|thumb|left|upright=.5|A boy peddling ''ciambelle'' in 19th-century Italy]]
Great, but what's the deal with the ring shape in the first place? Why not a ball or a disc, but a torus, which takes a great a lot more skill to form? Well, this shape has two advantages. First, a holey bread with a hole has only a slightly smaller volume with a much larger surface area than a whole bread of comparable size (the proof by calculating the surface areas and volumes of a torus and an ellipsoid is left as an exercise for the Reader). And a larger greater surface area allows the heat to spread more evenly inside the dough during the thermal treatment (boiling or baking). Secondly, a holey bread is easier to transport, especially for a street vendor who can just put his (somehow it's usually been men) ''taralli'' on a string or a stick and peddle them in the street. And the customers could even wear their ''tarallo'' like a bracelet, if they didn't eat it right away.
Dry ''taralli'' were used in a similar way as the ancient ''buccellata'' in that they could be stored for up to half a year and then eaten after being dunked in wine for softening. Were these toroidal ''taralli'' inspired by the Arab ''ka'ak'', brought by Levantine sailors to the Apulian ports of Apulia? Quite possibly, but we don't know that for sure. Whatever the case, soon after the ''taralli'' had appeared in southern Italy, similar breads were being made in the north. They bore a plethora of regional names, including ''"bricuocoli", "ciaramilie", "pane del marinaio", "mescuotte", "ciambelle", "ciambelloni", "braciatelle", "brazzatelle"'' and ''"brasadèle"''<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = The Oxford Companion to Italian Food
| nazwisko r = Riley
[[File:Oberndorf Fasnet 2014Di 027.jpg|thumb|upright|left|A carnival parade in Oberndorf on the Neckar, Germany]]
But where does this shape come from anyway? Nobody seems to know for sure; even the legends don't agree. One says that the shape of the pretzel is designed to resemble the arms of a monk folded in prayer. According to another one, it was invented by a baker from Württemberg who had been sentenced to death, but whom Count Eberhard von Urach promised to pardon on the condition that he bakes a bread through which the sun would shine three times. In any case, the pretzel shape is so distinctive that bakers' guilds throughout central Europe would adopt it as their coats of arms. You can still find it on the shop sign of many a German bakery. The There are differences in the pretzels pretzel's orientation, though; sometimes the pretzel is painted on a bakery sign belly-up, sometimes, belly-down, and there are even those compromise signs where it's been placed belly-sideways. This is yet another as-yet-unresolved dispute regarding the pretzel.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = Fragen: Wer hat die Brezel erfunden? Und wo ist bei der Brezel eigentlich oben und wo unten?
| url = http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cawPEARc-WYJ:www.museum-brotkultur.de/pdf/07Brezeln.pdf
Modern Polish cuisine is often described as combining two historical strains: on the one hand, the peasant cuisine, the poor, simple fare based on local and readily available ingredients; and on the other, the lordly cuisine of the nobility, sumptuous, abundant, exotic and following the rule, "pawn yourself, but show yourself". This view is somewhat oversimplified, though. Firstly, what people ate and drank had more to do with their actual income than the estate they were born into (for example, a relatively well-to-do peasant could eat just as well as a medium-income nobleman). And secondly, believe it or not, there were other social groups in Poland than just the peasantry and the nobility. Polish townsfolk, for instance, used to eat too, but they tend to be forgotten when historical Polish cuisine is being discussed. One reason for this may be that Polish towns were mostly populated by ethnic Germans and Jews, so their culinary heritage hasn't been included in the canon of ethnic Polish cuisine, which is mostly rural as a result. But there are at least two domains in which the culinary legacy of Polish towns has survived; these are beer brewing and bread baking. Sure, breweries and bakeries existed in the countryside as well, but it was the urban ones that were famous throughout the nation. The importance of urban bakers is still reflected today in the popularity of Poznań crescent rolls, Toruń gingerbread and yes, Cracovian ''obwarzanki''.
The oldest known mention of the latter comes from the 14th century. A royal-court book of accounts from the times of Queen Hedwig and King Vladislav Vladislaus Jagailo has the following expense recorded under the date 2 March 1394: "'''pro circulis obarzankij'', for the Queen – one penny." The Latin word, ''"circulis"'', shows that the breads in question were already round at the time. And the Polish word (''"obwarzanki"'' in modern spelling), shows that they were parboiled (''obwarzane'') before baking. Just like pretzels, these were lean and luxury goods at the same time,<ref>Balinska, ''op. cit.'', p. 14</ref> which made them the perfect choice for the royal table during Shrovetide, which happened to include the 2 March that year. The Shrovetide was a pre-Lenten period of optional fasting. According to the ledger record from that particular day, Queen Hedwig, who would be later declared Saint Hedwig, ate one penny worth of ''obwarzanki'' and three pence worth of salted herrings, while the visiting Duchess of Masovia, who wasn't that keen of fasting, was served chicken instead.<ref>{{ Cyt
| nazwisko r = Przezdziecki
| imię r = Alexander
[[Category: Pretzels]]
[[Category: Vladimir Mayakovsky]]
[[Category: Vladislav Vladislaus Jagailo]]
[[Category: Hedwig Angevin]]
[[Category: John Albert]]