Bollos del Istmo de Tehuantepec

These bollos are from the Istmo de Tehuantepec, the strip of Oaxaca where the land narrows between the Pacific and the Gulf, where the heat is heavy and the women run the markets. Juchitan and Tehuantepec are where this bread lives. Not Oaxaca City. Not Mexico. The Istmo. If a panadera in Mercado Jesus Carranza in Juchitan does not recognize what came out of your oven, you have made a different bread.

The defining ingredients are three: anise, manteca de cerdo, and ajonjoli. The anise goes in the dough, toasted first on the comal so the licorice oil wakes up. The manteca, not butter, is what gives the crumb its tender pull-apart texture and the flavor that anchors this bread to the Istmo. The ajonjoli on top is the visual signature, scattered generously after the egg wash so it toasts in the oven and clings to the crown of each bollo.

In the Istmo, bollos show up at every vela, the saint's-day celebrations the zapotecas have been throwing for centuries, where women in huipiles bordados carry trays of bread between tables and the band plays sones istmenos until the early morning. They show up at weddings stacked in tall pyramids. They show up at quinceaneras wrapped in embroidered servilletas. They show up at funerals next to the cafe de olla. This is everyday celebration bread, the kind that does not announce itself but is always there.

My mother did not bake these. She was from Jalisco and her bread tradition was different. I learned bollos from a panadera named Senora Rosalba in Tehuantepec who had been pressing them every morning for forty-three years when I met her. She told me: 'la manteca tibia, las manos frescas, el horno paciente.' Warm lard, cool hands, patient oven. I wrote it in the margin of my notebook and I have not forgotten it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.