Since 1982, Martin’s Handmade Pretzels has brought their handcrafted Pennsylvania Dutch Pretzels to New York’s Union Square Greenmarket, where customers return week after week for that classic flavor and satisfying crunch.
Our simple recipe and genuine commitment to slow, artisan food has remained unchanged since the first Martin’s hand-rolled pretzel came out of the drying oven more than 80 years ago.
Featured in FOOD+WINE, The New York Times and Vogue, and gracing the green rooms of Saturday Night Live and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Martin’s Handmade Pretzels remain the finest example of the hard pretzel form, using only flour, water, yeast, salt and soda. The Martin family, who began baking pretzels in the 1930s, continues the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition, which came to 17th century New York and Pennsylvania across the Atlantic from medieval Europe, where the twisted snack originated.
Today, each of our bakers hand roll around 12-15 pretzels per minute, creating a finished treat with a unique texture and singular flavor that remarkably weighs less than the flour that goes into making it.
Around 1900, the simplest machinery of the industrial revolution helped make pretzel baking a little faster and more economical, but these machines did virtually nothing to compromise quality. Hands still dominated the process.
For years, a pretzel twister’s speed had few equivalents in human terms. But, starting in mid-century, the quest for more economy and faster machines eventually eliminated hands, as well as the true magic of deep pretzel crunch and flavor.
