Sunday, February 01, 2004

	Click photo for larger image.

For years, the Benzel family got letter after letter telling them their packaging was wrong. Instead of "pretzel," the little red bags read "bretzel." The company's loyal customers thought they should know about the typo.

What those customers didn't know, though, is that bretzel is the German word for the salty snack that now comes in sticks, twists, thins and braids. And it was also the name Adolph Benzel gave his pretzel company in 1911, when it first opened in a 75-square-foot building in Altoona.

Almost a century later, his family has expanded his business, Benzel's Bretzel Bakery, to more than 2,000 times its original size and can make up to 50 million pretzels a day in what they call an ultra-modern bakery.

Now owned and operated by Adolph's grandson, Bill, and Bill's wife, Ann, Benzel's is an Altoona landmark at 5200 Sixth Ave.

	From the top: Bill Benzel, Ann Benzel and Joseph "Sparky" Lyle. Click photo for larger image. About this project "Here" is a weekly feature produced by Post-Gazette photographers and writers who roam the region to capture close-up slices of life. Can you point us to a special person or place, experience or story? E-mail us at here@post-gazette.com. Link to past installments HERE.

The company stopped doing public tours in 2000 after 20 years because of the need for additional space and liability issues. But a walk through the 130,000-square-foot main bakery reveals the care and precision that goes into each of the 30 pretzel products the Benzels make, including their best-selling Pennysticks. The bag still features a circa 1912 picture of Adolph Benzel with his fellow bakers.

Don Gorty, the production supervisor at Benzel's, says there are several things that make the company's pretzels stand out: quality control, good sanitation and good people.

Benzel's has 109 employees, many of whom have worked there for decades.

The process of making the pretzels -- from preparing the dough to bagging the still-warm, finished pretzels and putting them in cardboard boxes for shipping -- takes just 45 minutes and is highly automated. But the quality-control checks -- there are 10 for each batch -- are what make the pretzels special.

"It's tasting and touching and feeling the dough," Bill Benzel said.

Even the slightest mistake -- a bit too much flour or too much water -- can ruin an entire batch.

The family carefully guards Adolph Benzel's secret recipe, but they do say some pretzels bake at 200 degrees, while others cook as high as 800 degrees.

Joseph "Sparky" Lyle started working for the company in 1986. He still remembers when the company expanded and started making pretzels on a third line in the factory.

Lyle, 36, a Special Olympian who is developmentally challenged, got to eat the very first pretzel off it -- a Benzel's Thin Pretzel, which is one of his favorites.

Now, the Benzels have five lines, and their products have grown to include chocolate graham cracker twists and soy pretzels. Just this month, they experimented with making a honey-wheat braided pretzel.

The chocolate grahams have become Lyle's favorite product, even though he's not supposed to eat sugar.

"I turn around, make sure no one's looking, and I grab a whole handful," he says with a guilty smile.

When Bill Benzel started in the business more than 50 years ago, there were about 35 companies across the country that specialized in nothing but baking pretzels. Now, that number is down to just three or four, as other companies have diversified or gone out of business.

But the pretzel continues its popularity, thanks to low-fat diets.

While oat bran pretzels are their biggest mail-order seller, the Benzels say the Pennysticks - 4 1/4 -inch-long pretzel rods -- are their overall highest seller.

It was last year that TV chef David Rosengarten named the old-fashioned salted sticks the best pretzel in America.

Even before that designation, the company's pretzels were highly requested around the world, having been found on Air Force One, for sale in the Smithsonian and at Dollywood. Back when the sitcom "Murphy Brown" was in production, Ann Benzel said, Candice Bergen wanted their pretzels on the set every day.

"We ship our pretzels all over the world," she said.

Paula Reed Ward can be reached at pward@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1455. V.W.H. Campbell Jr. can be reached at bcampbell@post-gazette.com.

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