Why do you pull taffy?
The final important step in making taffy is pulling it: Stretching it out and folding it in half, then stretching and folding again, over and over, until you may reach the point of exhaustion.
Good exercisebut what does it do for the candy? As it turns out, pulling taffy aerates it, or incorporates many tiny air bubbles throughout the candy. This makes it lighter and chewier.
Taffy isnt the only candy out there that gets pulled this way. We saw molten lollipop pulled by a machine at a local lollipop factory. In this case, the air bubbles added by pulling were to make the candy less rock hard and more brittle.
So how did saltwater taffy come to be? One story holds that a seaside candy store was flooded by a storm and the resulting saltwater-logged taffy was discovered to be delicious. However, this story is probably apocryphal. Is there salt water in saltwater taffy?
Actually, no. There is saltand waterin saltwater taffy. But it isnt made with ocean water, despite the fact that its so widely available at seaside vacation spots.