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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.
Pan de burro is from the Mixteca. Not from Oaxaca City, not from the Valles Centrales. From Tonalá and Huajuapan and the small towns of the Mixteca Baja, where the bread got its name because the panaderos baked it in the early hours and loaded it onto burros to deliver to the villages that had no panadería of their own. The bread had to last the trip. That is why it is dense, why it is enriched with manteca, why the piloncillo runs all the way through. This is bread engineered for distance.
The leavener is pulque. Not yeast. Pulque, the fermented sap of the maguey, has raised the breads of the Mixteca for centuries, and it gives this loaf a slight sourness and a slow rise that commercial yeast cannot match. If you cannot find pulque outside Mexico, I will tell you to use yeast and I will also tell you what you are missing. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
The flavor is piloncillo, anise, and canela. Three notes, no more. The piloncillo is dark, mineral, almost smoky. The anise is the breath of the bread. The canela is true Mexican cinnamon, the bark that crumbles in your hand, not the hard cassia from the supermarket. Ajonjolí across the top, toasted in the oven heat. La manteca es el sabor.
My mother was from Jalisco and she did not bake this bread. But on a trip to Huajuapan in the early years of the 32-state project, I sat with a panadera named Doña Eufemia who pulled twenty loaves out of a wood-fired oven at five in the morning and handed me one wrapped in a servilleta. She said: "Esto se hace con paciencia y con manteca. Lo demás es decoración." This is made with patience and with lard. Everything else is decoration. I wrote it in the notebook and I have not changed the recipe since.
Pan de burro belongs to the panadería tradition that arrived in Mexico with Spanish wheat in the 16th century and was transformed by indigenous cooks who brought their own leaveners, fats, and sweeteners to the European loaf. In the Mixteca, isolated by mountainous terrain and underserved by colonial commerce, panaderos developed dense, long-keeping breads that could be transported by pack animal across difficult routes, a practice that gave the bread its name and persisted in some communities into the late 20th century. Pulque as a bread leavener predates commercial yeast in much of central and southern Mexico and remains in active use among traditional Mixteca panaderas, particularly in the towns of Tonalá, Huajuapan de León, and Silacayoápam, where the slow fermentation is considered inseparable from the bread's identity.
Quantity
1 (about 8 ounces)
chopped, plus 1/2 cup more for the dough
Quantity
2 cups
Quantity
2
Quantity
2 tablespoons
divided
Quantity
1/4 cup
at room temperature (or substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast bloomed in 1/2 cup warm water)
Quantity
1 cup, plus more for greasing
at room temperature
Quantity
2
at room temperature
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
8 cups, plus more for dusting
Quantity
1/4 cup
for finishing
Quantity
2 tablespoons
finely grated
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| piloncillo conechopped, plus 1/2 cup more for the dough | 1 (about 8 ounces) |
| water | 2 cups |
| Mexican canela (true cinnamon) sticks | 2 |
| anise seed (anis)divided | 2 tablespoons |
| pulqueat room temperature (or substitute 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast bloomed in 1/2 cup warm water) | 1/4 cup |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)at room temperature | 1 cup, plus more for greasing |
| large eggsat room temperature | 2 |
| fine sea salt | 1 teaspoon |
| all-purpose wheat flour | 8 cups, plus more for dusting |
| ajonjolí (sesame seeds)for finishing | 1/4 cup |
| piloncillo for finishingfinely grated | 2 tablespoons |
In a small saucepan, combine the chopped piloncillo cone, water, canela sticks, and 1 tablespoon of the anise seed. Bring to a low simmer over medium heat and cook until the piloncillo dissolves completely and the syrup turns the color of dark amber, about 15 minutes. Strain out the canela and anise. Let the syrup cool to lukewarm before you use it. Hot syrup will kill the pulque.
Pour the pulque into a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup of the lukewarm piloncillo syrup and stir gently. Within ten minutes you will see small bubbles rising and the surface will start to look alive. Pulque is not a substitute for yeast. It is the leavener. The Mixteca cooks have used it on this bread for as long as anyone can remember, and the slight sourness and the slow rise are what give pan de burro its character.
In a large wooden artesa or a wide mixing bowl, beat the manteca with the additional 1/2 cup piloncillo until it lightens and looks like wet sand, about 5 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the salt and the remaining 1 tablespoon anise seed. Pour in the activated pulque mixture and the rest of the cooled piloncillo syrup. Stir to combine. La manteca es el sabor. Do not skimp on it and do not swap it for vegetable shortening.
Add the flour two cups at a time, working it in with your hand. The dough will be heavy, dense, and slightly sticky. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead for a full 15 minutes. This is not a brioche. You are working a hard dough, the kind built to survive a journey on a burro's back across the Mixteca. When it is ready, the dough will feel firm under your palm and spring back slowly when you press it. Asi se hace y punto.
Grease a large bowl with manteca. Place the dough inside, turn it once to coat, and cover with a clean cotton cloth. Set it somewhere warm and quiet for 4 to 6 hours. Pulque rises slowly. Do not rush it with a warmer oven or a heating pad. The bread should roughly double in size and smell faintly sour and sweet at the same time.
Punch the dough down and turn it onto a lightly floured surface. Divide it into 8 equal pieces. Shape each piece into a thick oval, about 6 inches long and 3 inches wide, slightly domed on top. The Mixteca shape is sturdy, not delicate. These breads were made to be wrapped in cloth, packed into a pannier, and carried for hours. Place the loaves on two baking sheets lined with parchment, leaving room between them for the second rise.
Cover the shaped loaves with the cotton cloth and let them rise again, 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until they look puffed and feel light when you lift one. Meanwhile, heat your oven to 350°F. A wood-fired clay oven is the original way and gives the bread a smokier crust, but a home oven will give you a true loaf if you let it preheat fully for 30 minutes.
Brush each loaf lightly with melted manteca. Scatter the ajonjolí across the tops, pressing gently so the seeds adhere. Sprinkle the grated piloncillo over the seeds. The piloncillo melts into a dark glaze in the oven and the sesame toasts to a deep gold. This is the finish that the panaderas of Tonalá give the bread before it goes in.
Bake the loaves for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. The bread is ready when the tops are deep mahogany, the sesame is dark gold, and the loaves sound hollow when you tap the bottom. The interior should be dense but tender, the color of caramel from the piloncillo throughout. Let them cool on a wire rack for at least 20 minutes before you cut one open. Cutting hot bread compresses the crumb.
Serve pan de burro the way it is served in the Mixteca: with a jícara of chocolate de agua, frothed with a molinillo, or with strong black coffee. The bread keeps four to five days wrapped in a cotton servilleta at room temperature. It only gets better on day two and day three, when the piloncillo and anise have settled into the crumb. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
1 serving (about 250g)
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