South Philly’s newest bakery is rolling out fresh-made soft pretzels
Pretzel Day Pretzels in South Philadelphia offers chewy Bavarian pretzels as well as big-bellied Swabians, which are fat enough to stuff.
Philadelphia’s German roots run deep, and the beer halls and bakeries that generations of families started here have left a stamp on the city.
As such, Philly is also a pretzel town, Jim Mueller says. While he was growing up in Northeast Philadelphia in the late 1990s, soft-pretzel bakeries dotted neighborhoods across the city. He and his family bought pretzels from the now-closed Ben Franklin Pretzels on Kensington Avenue near Ontario as well as Federal Pretzel Baking Co. at Seventh and Federal.
Five years ago, Mueller was working as a UX designer and was craving a fix. “It kind of hit me that there were no pretzels to be gotten that weren’t straight from the [Philly] Pretzel Factory,” Mueller said of the ubiquitous Bensalem-based franchise. “I wanted to make them the way I remembered them tasting: buttery, rich, and flavorful.”
Mueller began studying recipes, and he and his wife, Annie, started a side project called Pretzel Day Pretzels. They began doing pop-ups and deliveries.
On Saturday, Pretzel Day Pretzels went the brick-and-mortar route at Fifth and Dickinson Streets in South Philadelphia, opening at the former Milk & Sugar space with a simple setup: takeout only and morning-to-early-afternoon hours.
Mueller rolls and bakes standard-issue soft pretzels, but his specialties are stuffed pretzels and German varieties that you don’t really see around here, particularly Swabian pretzels.
“It’s a little different from a Bavarian,” Mueller said. “Bavarians are what most people are familiar with — thick all around. Swabians have a big belly and skinny arms, and the arms get a little crunch to them. You can split the belly and stuff them. You can do more with them than a regular pretzel, and it opens up a lot of possibilities to experiment.”
Stuffing is where Pretzel Day Pretzels leans hardest into variety. The most popular option is the long hot-provolone pretzel, with other offerings including chili pretzels, pizza pretzels, bialys, cinnamon-sugar pretzels, and, on some days, pretzel dogs and Bavarian cheese logs. The lineup will shift slightly week to week, Mueller said, “but we’ll always have the core stuff.”
Saturday’s opening was low-key, with small giveaways such as heart-shaped pretzels and tote bags. The shop will offer coloring pages for kids that can be redeemed for a free pretzel.
“I just want it to be a pretzel shop for everyone,” Mueller said. “I don’t want it to feel high-end or bougie — just a neighborhood pretzel shop.”
As he sees it, Pretzel Day is meant to feel less like a concept and more like a missing piece put back into place.
“You always hear that Philadelphia’s a pretzel town,” he said. “But then you think — where are all the pretzel shops? I never thought I’d open one when I started doing this, but here we are.”
Pretzel Day Pretzels, 1501 S. Fifth St., instagram.com/pretzeldaypretzels. Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday.