Hojaldra Oaxaqueña

Hojaldra is from Oaxaca. Not Mexico City, not Puebla, not the generic Mexican panadería. It is a Valles Centrales bread, sold in the panaderías of Tlacolula, Zaachila, Mitla, and Miahuatlán, and it has nothing to do with the puff pastry the same word describes in Spain. The name carries over because of the lamination, the layers, but the dough is enriched with eggs and manteca and the result is a soft, flaky individual roll, scored on top with a cross, that you eat with hot chocolate de agua and nothing else.

This is not pan de yema and it is not pan de manteca. People confuse the three. Pan de yema is the everyday yolk-rich Oaxacan bread, eaten at breakfast year-round and not, no matter what the gringo travel articles say, only for Día de Muertos. Pan de manteca is denser and saltier, closer to a biscuit. The hojaldra sits between them: flakier than pan de manteca because of the lamination, less yolk-heavy than pan de yema, perfumed with anise toasted on the comal until the kitchen smells like the bakery at dawn.

My mother did not make hojaldras. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco has its own breads. I learned this one from doña Estela in Zaachila, who has been pressing dough on the same wooden artesa since 1972 and who corrected my hand position three times before she let me shape my first round. She told me the cross is not optional, the manteca is not optional, and the chocolate is not a suggestion. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and in Oaxaca, the morning bread teaches you what kind of day you are about to have.