Steaming hot café con leche (espresso coffee mixed with a generous portion of hot milk), served with a basket of Mexico's pan dulce (sweet bread).
When my mother, may she rest in peace, first visited me here in Mexico, one of her dearest wishes was to visit a Mexican bakery. For more than 40 years, Mother baked every crumb of bread that she and anyone visiting her consumed: white, rye, whole wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough, French baguette, and esoteric ethnic loaves that she just had to try. Mother wanted to see how bread was made in Mexico. At my suggestion, she even brought her baking apron for her stay here, hoping to push her floury hands deep into some yeasty dough.
In those years, there was a tiny and excellent bakery just a block from my house. In a room to the side of his house, through a semi-secret door at the back of his garage, don Pedro turned out hundreds of pieces of pan dulce every day. Shortly after Mom's arrival, I took her to meet don Pedro, the master baker, and his helpers.
Don Pedro spoke no English and my mother spoke no Spanish, but I interpreted between them and they discovered that they were soul mates. For two hours, don Pedro and my mother swapped bread stories—conversation about oven temperatures, yeast, flour densities, and tales of experiments, successes and failures. The day before Mother was to leave for home, she asked to go back to the bakery to say goodbye to don Pedro. They both wept because she was leaving and insisted that pictures be taken before they exchanged farewell hugs. Such is the bond of bread. Don Pedro and my mother have both passed away, and I hope they've had a chance to hug one another again in the más allá (the great beyond).
Bread fresh from the oven: the evocative aroma brings back timeworn memories of Mom's kitchen, filled with the yeasty perfume of twice-raised, golden-crusted hot bread. Here in Mexico, that redolent scent wafts through the air from bakeries scattered like hidden treasures through many neighborhoods. At certain hours of the early morning and mid-afternoon, local ovens disgorge mountains of pan dulce destined for tiny corner mom-n-pop stores or for sale hot from the ovens to individuals who know just when to arrive.
For a few pesos, an early breakfast of this hot, slightly sweet bread served with milk, juice, hot chocolate, or coffee gets Mexico up and off to work or school. For a few pesos more, the same sort of late supper rocks Mexico to sleep.
In the history of the world, bread has its own record and development. The making of wheat bread has evolved with the progress of world civilization. Particularly in gastronomic Mexico, bread has deep roots in the evolution of the República. The Spanish brought the flavors and recipes of all Europe with them to the New World. The 1860s era of Emperor Maximilian and his French wife, Charlotte, imposed a giddy 19th Century French influence—with puff pastries, whipped cream fillings, and sticky glazes—on the already extensive assortment of Mexican breads.
If you've never visited a Mexican bakery—a bakery where the breads are baked right on the premises, not brought in from a central bakery—you have a real treat in store. One of my favorite bakeries is owned by the Rojas family in Ajijic, Jalisco. When the bolillos (crusty, dense, white rolls) come out of the oven in the early mornings and again when the roles (cinnamon rolls—they're addictive) are ready at about 12:30 PM, you'll find lines of locals waiting to carry home a bag of hot, fresh goodies.
The Rojas brothers, long-time bakers at Panadería Rojas in Ajijic, Jalisco. Photo courtesy Semanario Laguna.
At the Rojas bakery, the bakers will help you select the breads you want–if you don't know the bread by name, you just point and tell them how many. There are no bakers' shelves at Rojas, and the selection of items is usually small. Most of the breads are delivered to shops and stores shortly after they're taken from the ovens.
Larger Mexican bakeries can be a little intimidating when you first push that front door open and enter a warm, fragrant world of unfamiliar sights and intoxicating yeasty, sugary smells.
One of my favorite bakery excursions was to Panadería Pan Bueno, located at Avenida Vallarta #5295 in Guadalajara. The owner, Sr. Roberto Cárdenas González, graciously allowed me to take photographs with the assistance of his employee, Edith Hernández González.
When you go inside Pan Bueno, take a minute to look around first to orient yourself. Right there by the door are the big metal trays and the tongs you need to gather up the breads you want to buy. With tray and tongs in hand, let's take a tour of the racks of pan dulce.
Very lightly sweetened biscochos are similar to biscuits.
Tasty sugar-swirled conchas are ubiquitous throughout Mexico.
During the Mexican Revolution, soldiers from every region of Mexico came to know the foods of states far from their homes. When they returned to their own areas after the fighting, they took the recipes and flavors of other regions home with them. The south of Mexico incorporated northern bread recipes into its repertoire, the west took from the east, the north from the south.
Today, most panaderías (bakeries) in Mexico prepare similar assortments of pan dulce, along with a sampling of their own regional specialties.
Puerquitos (little pigs, on the right) taste very much like gingerbread.
It's been said that Mexico, of all the countries in the world, has the broadest and most delicious selection of breads. As a result of the mixture of cultures and regional flavors, today in Mexico you will find more than 2000 varieties of breads, and all will tempt your palate.
Pan dulce is just one variety, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of different sub-varieties. The great mosaic of Mexican bread making, inventiveness, and creativity is such that every variety of pan dulce has a name, usually associated with its appearance. That's why you'll see names of animals, objects, and even people gracing the breads on bakery shelves. Puerquitos (little pigs), moños o corbatas (bowties or neckties), ojo de buey (ox eye), canastas (baskets), conchas (seashells), cuernos (horns), chinos (Chinese), polvorones (shortbread), hojaldres (puff paste), empanadas (turnovers), and espejos (mirrors): all are names of specific and very different sweet breads. My current favorite name for a pan dulce is niño envuelto (it means wrapped-up baby and it looks for all the world like a slice of jellyroll).
Niño envuelto on the left, besos on the right.
The loaded shelves at the Panadería El Resobado, in Coatepec, Veracruz. On this trip, my companions and I bought quite a bit of pan dulce and even though it had been highly recommended to us, we decided we really didn't care for it. The bread is baked in wood-fired ovens and tasted extremely heavily–and unpleasantly–of wood smoke. What a disappointment!
Mexican Wedding Cookies (Polvorones de Nuez). Photo courtesy Storethisnotthat.
Here's a familiar and delicious recipe for a traditional Mexican sweet bread.
Polvorones de Nuez
Mexican Wedding Cookies
Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (3/4 pound) butter (room temperature)
3/4 pound powdered sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds or pecans
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
Procedure
Beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Then beat in 2 tablespoons of the powdered sugar, the egg yolk, vanilla, and your choice of nuts. Gradually add the flour, beating after each addition to blend thoroughly. Pinch off pieces of dough the size of large walnuts and roll between your palms into round balls. Place the dough balls 1 1/2 inches apart on un-greased baking sheets. Flatten each ball very slightly.
Bake in a 275 degree oven until very lightly browned (about 45 minutes). Allow to cool on the baking sheets until lukewarm.
Sift half the remaining powdered sugar onto a large sheet of waxed paper. Roll each cookie gently but firmly in the sugar. Place cookies on wire racks over wax paper. Allow the cookies to cool completely and again dust generously with more powdered sugar.
If you make these cookies ahead of need, store them in airtight containers, layered between sheets of waxed paper, for up to three days.
Makes approximately three dozen cookies.
As Edith and I made the rounds of the bakery, I asked her if she knew the origin of any of the names for pan dulce. With a charming smile, she admitted that they were just traditional inventos—made-up titles. When I asked her if she ever got tired of eating these sweet breads, she shook her head emphatically. "Oh no, señora, we always love the pan." Here, Edith is holding a huge rosca de reyes, the bread eaten on January 6, the Feast of the Three Kings.
You will always love the pan as well. And now, if you'll excuse me, a slice of niño envuelto is calling to me from my kitchen. How could I have resisted buying a pan dulce or two as I made the bakery tour? All right, it was four—but who's counting?
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