Today’s Google Doodle, newly baked by Esther’s German Bakery, celebrates the unrivaled pretzel—one of the world’s most adaptable and beloved foods! As Oktoberfest, the Bavarian fall celebration starts today, Brotfrauen (or bread women) will carry baskets of chewy Brezeln through Bierhallen (huge tents) in Germany, the center of Oktoberfest party.

The historical backdrop of pretzels is a story with numerous twists and turns, and a portion of the records throughout the hundreds of years are still debated right up ’til today. Made without dairy or eggs, pretzels have for quite some time been viewed as a staple during Lent. One of the more brilliant pretzel legends includes a group of priests baking pretzels in a Vienna basement who caught an invading army tunneling under the city walls in 1510.

As a reward for obstructing the intrusion, the pretzel bakers cooks got their very own coat of arms. Another story asserts that the expression “tying the knot” alludes to the 17th-century Swiss custom of utilizing a pretzel during wedding functions.

The delicate pretzel’s one of a kind texture is accomplished by plunging the mixture in a lye solution just before baking, bringing about a chemical procedure known as the “Maillard reaction.” Smooth and brown outwardly, chewy within, delicate pretzels are best eaten fresh.

Julius Sturgis in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania was the first to bake them until they got hard, expanding their shelf life and enabling them to be transported far and wide. In 1947, the Reading Pretzel Machinery Company divulged a pretzel-production machine that cranked out up to 250 pretzels per minute!

Over 50 years after the fact, pretzels are similarly as wonderful as ever, regardless of whether hard or delicate, salty or sweet, buttered or plain, a bag of pretzel sticks from the supermarket or an extra-enormous Brezel at Oktoberfest.

The world’s biggest pretzel was baked in 2015 in El Salvador, weighing over 780kg with a length of 29ft.