(sorry for the missing accents on some of the words, I’m not sure how to get them into the text)
My first love in life was bread. Or books. It’s a pretty close tie.
But I remember heading home from the store with my dad, a hot loaf of french bread, or somedays even sourdough, in my lap, trying to only eat half of it before getting home about 5 minutes later. I’m talking a feeds a full family during a spaghetti dinner loaf of bread here. I’d eat as much of it as possible on the way home, and the rest at home followed by a big glass of milk (and later, as stomach ache). Of course, most of the bread I ate as a kiddo was your typical plain, maybe even savory French bread or tangy sourdough.
Ahead of the Museum’s Festival de Migraciones this past weekend, an article came up about a local panaderia (bakery) selling pan de muerto or, “dead bread”, a traditional sweet bread baked around dia de los muertos or the day of the dead, a popular holiday held in Central America, especially Oaxaca. Nice, tan circular loaves with little bone shapes on them and usually sesame seeds or sprinkles. The flavor reminds me a lot of a lightly sweet cinnamon roll minus the oppressive amounts of frosting. I ordered a bunch of them, along with conchas, or sweet bread with frosting, for the museum and they sold very well. It helped that they were absolutely gorgeous as well, and ridiculously fresh. When I went to pick them up, they had only been out of the oven for about 20 or 30 minutes and their sweet smell filled the covered bed of my pickup truck, billowing out when I went to unload them at the event. If I hadn’t been totally overrun with adrenaline, I would have probably tried to eat at least a few of them.
Since our sweet success at the festival, I had been thinking of how I could get some cash, which I rarely carried and get some more sweet bread from the little El Pueblo panaderia. On my way home from work today, I found a few bucks in my purse and a plethora of change in my wallet (where did it come from?? Divine providence probably). I stopped in at the small market and stared at the five glowing cases of sweetbreads, none of which I knew the name of. There was a person in line in front of me, chatting with the clerk picking out breads, the clerk offering something else and the woman declining, paying her $6.85 and leaving. The transaction was all in Spanish. Some of the people in the market spoke English, and my Spanish is, well, minimal- I am a good fly on the wall but can’t say too much unless I really sit and think about it- but we made it work. I recognized the clerk from the weekend before, when I picked up 75 sweetbreads for the festival, I’m not sure if he remembered me. I contemplated my choices, limited by three dollars and a bunch of random change. I picked out a yellow rolled pastry “Lemon?” the clerk asked.
heck yeah I said in my head “yes please”
I paid my $2.50 and headed out, excited to break into it in the truck before headed home.
It was a yellow sponge-like cake with jelly on the top along with some kind of flaky sugar, and jelly in the spiral of the cake. It reminded me of a yule log in how the jelly was rolled into the cake, which was probably baked flat then rolled, topped with sugar, and cut. I’m usually not a fan of jelly, but there was enough to be interesting without overwhelming. Of the two types of Mexican pastries I had tried, they seemed to both do an outstanding job of walking that line carefully- sweet, but not too much so. It was something a coworker of mine had commented on earlier in the week when I, once again for probably the fourth time in the week leading up to the festival, mentioned the pan de muerto. It was an exciting new foodie discovery for me and I couldn’t stop talking about it.
I thought about the other pan dulce (sweet bread) I had seen- bright pink and white cut like biscotti, pink cookies, one that I swore looked like candy corn, round rolls, with sesame seeds or unadorned, muffins, cones filled with some kind of frosting. The last few times I had been in here buying pan de muerto for myself, friends, coworkers or the museum ( I had been in there a lot recently), I saw some new shape or color of bread.
While the bread cases were my personal highlight of the shop, there were also boxes of papayas and sweet potatoes, bags of chicharrones (fried pork skins-freshly made from the look of it), corn husks for tamales, a variety of hot sauces and what looked like roasted peanuts, cheeses, cremas, Mexican candy, and more, packed into a storefront probably not larger than a 20×20 foot space. The building itself is much larger, you can just barely see behind the counter how far back it goes for the bakery itself. Hand written signs for tamales by the dozen (noted), CASH ONLY and flyers for English language classes and for now past dia de los muertos events were taped up near the door to the bakery. When you opened the door, a long doorbell chime would ring, I swear it went on for at least 10 or 15 seconds- ding, ding, ding dooong, ding ding ding doonngggg- the same tune the Catholic school I went to would play to mark the hour each hour.
In the parking lot is an outstanding taco truck- their carne asada super burrito is different but outstanding, probably second only to my pre-pandemic memories of Los Giles (pronounced HEE – lays, not Giles like Buffy) located out in Arcata.
I imagined myself one day comfortably ordering in Spanish, and not totally embarrassing myself or the store clerk. “como se llama eso?” pointing at a bread I didn’t know the name of- today I saw some that were in the shape of pigs, which I thought were cute. I was embarrassed today to ask what they were, I didn’t want to seem out of place or inexperienced, but I knew deep down I already was and the clerk probably knew that when I walked in the door.
A quick google search labels the pig cookies as marranitos or puerquitos (little pigs or piglets). They’re also referred to as Mexican gingerbread cookies. Hell yeah, I love gingerbread. Guess I know what I’m getting next time I can scrounge up some random money.
“Todos el marranitos, por favor- todos! Toma mi dinero!”
Katie Buesch 