Did you know that pretzels got their start in the early church?  As early as 610AD at a monastery somewhere in Southern France or Northern Italy, where monks used scraps of dough and formed them into strips to represent a child’s arms folded in prayer. The three empty holes represented the Christian Trinity. As with a lot of foods, the exact origin of the pretzel is unknown. The monks offered the warm, doughy bribe to children who had memorized their Bible verses and prayers. The monks called it a Pretiola, Latin for little reward. From there, the pretzel transformed into the Italian word, Brachiola, which means little arms. The Pretiola journeyed beyond the French and Italian wine regions, hiked the Alps, wandered through Austria,…