this one goes out to pan dulce
my infatuation with yeasted, buttery sweet bread
I know I’ve reflected on pastries in Mexico City a lot. But it’s all been for good reason. Pan dulce (Mexican sweet bread) is ridiculously good.
Even from grocery stores- which always had rows on rows of little indulgences waiting to be scooped up by tongs and put on a platter by shoppers- they were good. Much of pan dulce have an enriched dough base, and buttery bread with sugar is a combination that has yet to fail me.
So while any pan dulce goodies you pick up in cdmx will satisfy, there is still a big difference between the basic and the GOOD. The truly good. Soft. Buttery. Rich. This kind of good will blow you away. The most famous pan dulce of all is concha- a sweet yeasted bun that very much reminds me of brioche topped with a sweet cookie-like shell. I always enjoyed it, but my appreciation for it sky rocketed after having a truly good one. It was one of the best baked goods of the trip, and since we had the joy of eating them fresh from the oven- it was heavenly.
First, a bit of history
Now I am no history girl, but I was fascinated by the pastry game in CDMX in general. Yes, there was an array of pan dulce, but aside from the plentiful presence of concha, French patisserie seemed overwhelmingly abundant. Now, french pastry is the most famous of all, so seeing it is never a surprise. But it wasn’t just its presence… it was how unbelievably good it all was.
Butter croissants better than a good chunk of the ones we ate in France, perfectly laminated scrolls, and decadent bites like the french kouignn amann were easy to come by. I wasn’t complaining, but I was curious. Why was French patisserie such a big deal in Mexico City?