When it comes to food history, St. Louis is known for a few… let’s say, distinctive inventions. There’s toasted ravioli, the deep-fried, marinara-dipped snack that no one outside the 314 seems to understand. There’s gooey butter cake, a sugar bomb with a density rivaled only by its calorie count. And then there’s our beloved thin-crust pizza, cut into squares and topped with provel—a cheese so divisive, it has its own Twitter wars.

And, of course, depending on where you live and your personal bagel beliefs, St. Louis went and ruined bagels for a generation with the Panera sliced bagel debacle of 2019.

But hidden within this culinary chaos is a little-known gem, a quiet, crunchy, cornmeal-coated holdout from a different era: the tzitzel bagel. And if you think this one’s just another regional oddity, think again. Unlike our pizza, our gooey cakes, or our toaster-bound pasta, the tzitzel bagel has a genuinely compelling origin story, one that traces back to a time when St. Louis was a major hub for Jewish immigrants and a center for classic Jewish baking.

You can Google it all you want, but you won’t find tzitzel bagels outside of St. Louis. It’s a one-city phenomenon, as uniquely local as toasted ravioli but with a pedigree that even New York might envy. And at the heart of this story is one family, one bakery and one big, cornmeal-coated mystery.

Let me explain.

The tzitzel bagel

It’s hard to say exactly when the first tzitzel bagel rolled out of a St. Louis bakery oven, but if you follow the crumbs, they lead back to the legendary Pratzel’s Bakery. Established in 1913 by Max and Nathan Pratzel, this family-run institution served the St. Louis Jewish community for nearly a century, becoming famous for its rye bread, challah and—of course—its tzitzel rye.

The tzitzel bagel: From Pratzel’s to Present Day

The tzitzel rye itself is the clear ancestor of the tzitzel bagel and much of what we know about its origins comes from a 2017 interview with Ron Pratzel conducted by Dr. Harley Hammerman, who preserves St. Louis’ culinary history through his Lost Tables and Lost Dishes projects. In that interview, Ron Pratzel recalled how his father, Nate Pratzel—a second-generation baker—first experimented with rolling rye loaves in cornmeal to prevent sticking in the ovens. Over time, Nate developed a fondness for the crispy bottoms this technique created, eventually deciding to coat the entire loaf, giving birth to the crackly, cornmeal-covered tzitzel rye that became a Pratzel’s signature.

The bagel version likely followed, though the exact timeline is fuzzy. What’s clear is that the tzitzel bagel, like its rye sibling, became a St. Louis staple, marked by its thick, rustic cornmeal coating that sets it apart from the glossier, boiled bagels of the East Coast.

The tzitzel bagel: A tale of four bakers

Today, the tzitzel lives on, thanks in part to area bakers like Amanda Rainey of Goldie’s Bagels in Columbia, Mo.; Alex Pifer of Baked & Boiled Bagels in St. Louis; Scott Lefton and Doug Goldenberg of Lefty’s Bagels in Chesterfield and Giti Fredman at Bagels & Bliss in University City. All four have embraced this crunchy, quirky St. Louis classic and include their version on their menus.

For Rainey, a St. Louis native who grew up eating bagels, she didn’t think much about their regional variations until a Jewish food tour of New York made her realize tzitzel bagels weren’t a universal thing. “I remember going to New York for the first time and being genuinely confused when I didn’t see tzitzel on the menu,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wait, where’s my tzitzel bagel?’”

She’s since brought the tradition to mid-Missouri, where Goldie’s customers have embraced the cornmeal-coated bagel as both a nostalgic throwback and a local oddity. “I don’t have Pratzel’s exact recipe, but we do a cornmeal-coated rye bread that’s our version of it,” she says. “It’s super popular. And, yeah, people mispronounce it all the time. We’ve heard everything from ‘taziki’ to ‘schnitzel.’”

Meanwhile, at Baked & Boiled in Soulard, Pifer took a more practical route into the tzitzel world. “I originally had a request from a customer for what she called ‘a cornmeal bagel’ back while I was still popping up at Wild Olive in Shaw,” she explains. “I tried it out and noticed how impeccable it is! It’s toasty, delicious and crunchy, so I ran with it when we opened the shop in Soulard.”

Pifer admits the tzitzel bagel didn’t catch on right away. “People in the city seemed to be less familiar with the tzitzel bagel than those that come from the county,” she says. “It was slow to take off originally, likely because of this unfamiliarity, but it is picking up recently with our city regulars, too.”

She even had to change the name on the bagel case for a while, swapping out “tzitzel” for the more straightforward “cornmeal” to avoid customer confusion. But the bagel has since found its fans. “We refused to remove it from the menu despite the original customer indifference and I think that was for good reason based on recent tzitzel demand,” she says.

Lefty’s Bagels and the Pratzel legacy

Then there’s Lefty’s Bagels, which took a more intentional approach to preserving this slice of St. Louis history. Co-owner Goldenberg didn’t just stumble onto the tzitzel tradition by accident. Instead, his team went looking for the real deal, eventually finding a Pratzel’s tzitzel rye recipe through Harley Hammerman’s Lost Dishes website.

That recipe comes from the “Manna Cafe and Bakery Cookbook,” written by Barb Pratzel, who is married to Mike Pratzel, a third-generation member of the Pratzel family. Barb, who ran Manna Cafe and Bakery in Madison, Wisc., included the family’s tzitzel rye recipe in her 2021 cookbook as a way of preserving a piece of Jewish St. Louis history.

Reflecting on her time running Manna Cafe, Barb Pratzel told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“It taught me the importance of food and its power to bring people together, especially through bread. Pratzel’s Bakery, founded by three brothers around 1908, operated in St. Louis until about 2010. My husband was third generation. One of their creations was the corn tzitzel, a sourdough rye bread rolled entirely in cornmeal. We included that recipe in the cookbook.

“After Pratzel’s closed, we’d still get calls from people wanting this bread. It became a cultural touchstone for our community, a reflection of our Jewish identity. Sharing those breads and their stories with our customers, we were making a connection.”

Goldenberg and his team have used this recipe as the base for their own tzitzel rye, tweaking it to fit their production scale while staying true to the original’s crackly, cornmeal-coated crust.

As for what makes tzitzel rye different from a typical Jewish rye, Goldenberg explains, “Tzitzel rye differs from typical rye bread in that the outer crust is coated in cornmeal, giving it a bit more outer texture and flavor.”

The tzitzel bagel: The crunch future 

For all their differences, these bakers share a love for the crunchy, messy, slightly mysterious history of the tzitzel bagel, even if they can’t quite agree on where the name comes from.

Rainy, for her part, has a few theories. She speculates that the word might have roots in Yiddish slang, possibly connected to the fringed religious garment known as tzitzis, or perhaps even a more risqué bit of linguistic evolution that we’ll leave to the imaginations of curious readers.

“I just bake the bagels,” she laughs. “I’ve been dying for someone to do this story and figure it out.”

Maybe, just maybe, we’re getting closer.