Tasters: Don't futz with Utz

Snyder's of Hanover is buying Utz, and has pledged not to fool with the two product lines - at least, for now. That's a good thing for snack-food sophisticates, who know that all pretzels are not created equal.

An Inquirer tasting of 17 products from the two companies revealed a consistent distinction between the brands as Utz and Snyder's went nugget to nugget in the newsroom, chunky twist to chunky twist.

There was no clear winner of the broader popular vote, as casual tasters on the whole were more or less split. But Food section staffers certainly had their obvious favorite: Utz pretzels delivered the most explosive crunch and saltiest savor.

The salt content was no illusion. With an average of 470 mg of sodium per serving, Utz pretzels nearly double the Snyder's serving average of 240 mg. But health issues aside, the more generous salting - with smaller crystals scattered evenly like snow - lent Utz pretzels a deeper flavor, with a more resonant twang to the sourdough, a toastier nuance to the nugget, and a roasty linger to the "extra dark" special twists, a new personal favorite.

For pure crunching prowess, meanwhile, Utz consistently reigned with the superior snap. The deeply top-split Snyder's nugget, for example, dissolved blandly in a dry and powdery pouf beside the croutonlike crackle of the more lightly scored Utz.

A side-by-side comparison of the thick sourdough twists showed a disparity in pretzel artistry, too. The Utz twist was plump, stout, and lovingly rounded, the ending tips of its bow-tied dough baked into perky little nubs of craggy crunch. The Snyder's twist, on the other hand, resembled a squashed and sagging heart, its tawny surface pockmarked by freckles where most of the coarse salt had flaked off.

The tasting wasn't entirely an Utz sweep. For example, Snyder's honey mustard onion-powdered nuggets (bright, tart, snappy, addictive) left the butter-flavored Utz sticks (as cloying as the bottom of a bag of microwave popcorn) behind in the flavored dust.

One of the group's other top favorites, meanwhile, was Snyder's racquetlike square "snaps." With a gridlike lattice for maximum surface area, they delivered Snyder's best all-around crunch. And with all those little crannies, there may not be a better pretzel for dipping.

In the ever-shrinking world of snack-food producers, Snyder's will need all the pretzel snap it can muster.