I thought about making this topic a Monday mystery, but the only mystery about this is a question of how popular these really are. I also thought about saving the photo until Friday, but my self-imposed Food on Fridays rule is that the topic should be a food Chris and I have actually tried.

But when I saw this poster the other day for a new food now available exclusively at the supermarket where I shop, well, I couldn’t pass up the chance to take a photo:

Advertisement for “Pretzel Dogs”

Oddly enough, the name of the product, Pretzel Dogs, is in English, not German. A “pretzel” is called a Brezel in German, and while the term “hot dog” is used in German it is borrowed from English.

Here’s the tagline description — which is in German — on the label of the bag:  Herzhafte Hotdogs in leckerem Laugenbrezelteig, “hearty hotdogs in a tasty lye pretzel dough“.

That translation at first made me wonder if my dictionary was off: Laugenbrezel is translated as “lye pretzel”. But that just goes to shows how much I (don’t) know about making pretzels: apparently, lye is a standard ingredient in making a soft pretzel. I’m not sure I needed to know that; I have found the tasty soft pretzels around here one of my favorite German foods, but the thought of it having lye as an ingredient does now give me pause. Although check out this article, as it clarifies that the lye used is not the caustic cleanser type. But still.

Anyway, it was just odd to see something called Pretzel Dogs on the big poster at the market. Personally, I think the name is all wrong. The American version of a similar food is called Pigs in Blankets, which is what the title of this post says — Decke means “blanket” in German.

However, IMHO the name for this German version really should be Pigs in Pretzels. It’s got a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you agree? Maybe they can rename them next year…