Chef Lupita
Pan de Muerto Oaxaqueño con Cabecita
Oaxaca's Day of the Dead bread. Egg-yolk dough leavened with pulque, perfumed with toasted anise, and crowned with a cabecita, a small painted dough head that represents the soul returning to eat.
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Chef Lupita
Regañadas Oaxaqueñas
Oaxaca's flaky laminated sheet pastries, rolled paper-thin and baked crisp with ajonjolí and a dusting of canela sugar. The pastries the panaderas of the Valles Centrales pile onto altars for Día de Muertos, one for each soul coming home.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Yema Oaxaqueño
Oaxaca City's everyday egg-yolk bread, enriched with manteca, perfumed with anise and orange, crowned with ajonjolí. Torn warm into a jícara of chocolate de agua at six in the morning.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Cazuela de Tlacolula
Tlacolula's Sunday tianguis bread, baked into individual cazuelas of barro rojo from Atzompa, the hollow center waiting for crema agria, mermelada de tejocote, or whatever fruit the Valles Centrales has ripened that week.
Chef Lupita
Pan Negro de Chocolate Oaxaqueño
Oaxaca's dark wheat festival bread, enriched with cocoa, piloncillo, canela, and a whisper of clove. The bread that lives next to a jícara of chocolate de agua at every Valles Centrales panadería.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Carita de Miahuatlán
From the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, the Sánchez family's pan de yema crowned with sun-dried cabecitas of angels, calaveras, and Frida Kahlo, hand-painted in cochinilla, cempasúchil, and añil before they go into the oven.
Chef Lupita
Pan Resobado de Zaachila
From the Mercado Alarii in Zaachila, a dense yeasted bread embroidered in red, yellow, and pink vegetable petals: a Zapotec textile rendered in dough for Dia de Muertos.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Yuca de Mayultiaguis
From Mayultiaguis in Oaxaca's Sierra Norte. A pre-Columbian cassava flatbread, grated by hand, pressed on banana leaf, and baked on a clay comal. Still placed on Día de Muertos altars where panaderia bread never belonged.
Chef Lupita
Tortillas Blandas Oaxaqueñas
Oaxaca's everyday soft tortilla, hand-pressed from nixtamalized maíz criollo, blistered on a clay comal, larger and thicker than the central Mexican version and made for the table, not the taqueria.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Elote Oaxaqueño
Oaxaca's corn-cake bread, fresh elote blended with eggs, condensed milk, butter, and manteca, baked into a tender square that anchors the merienda hour with a jícara of chocolate de agua on the side.
Chef Lupita
Panqué de Naranja Oaxaqueño
Oaxaca's everyday orange tea cake, built on fresh-squeezed naranja, mantequilla, and zest crushed into the sugar. Served in thick slices with café de olla at six in the morning.
Chef Lupita
Cocoles Oaxaqueños
Oaxaca's rhomboid yeasted rolls, perfumed with toasted anise and softened with manteca, brushed shiny with egg and crowned with ajonjolí. The merienda bread that meets a jícara of chocolate de agua at the end of every Oaxaqueño day.
Chef Lupita
Bollos del Istmo de Tehuantepec
From Juchitan and Tehuantepec, soft yeasted rolls scented with toasted anise and enriched with manteca, crowned in ajonjoli. The bread that shows up at every vela, every wedding, every quinceanera in the Istmo.
Chef Lupita
Hojaldra Oaxaqueña
Oaxaca's round individual bread, laminated with manteca de cerdo and scored on top with a deep cross. Flakier than pan de manteca, perfumed with toasted anise, built to be dunked into chocolate de agua at six in the morning.
Chef Lupita
Pan Amarillo Oaxaqueño
From the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, a round, faintly sweet bread tinted gold by egg yolks and azafrancillo. The daily companion to café de olla and chocolate de agua, baked the way the panaderas of Zaachila and Mitla have always done it.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Burro de la Mixteca
The dense wheat-and-piloncillo bread of the Oaxacan Mixteca, raised with pulque, enriched with manteca, finished with anise and ajonjolí, baked dark enough to survive the journey it was named for.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Manteca Oaxaqueño
Oaxaca's everyday lard bread, soft and faintly sweet, enriched with manteca de cerdo and glazed deep gold with egg yolk. The roll that lives beside the chocolate de agua at every Oaxacan breakfast.
Chef Lupita
Pan de Pulque de Tlacolula
Tlacolula's wheat bread leavened with pulque, the fermented agave sap that pre-dates yeast in Mexico. Slow-rising, slightly sour, with the depth that only wild fermentation gives.
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