Pan de Pueblo Yucateco

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large mixing bowl or stand mixer with dough hook
• •Baking stone or heavy sheet pan
• •Bench scraper for dividing the dough
• •Sharp blade or razor for scoring
• •Clean cotton servilleta for covering during rises
• •Wire rack or woven palm petate for cooling

Instructions

1. 1

   Combine the dry ingredients

   In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the bread flour, whole wheat flour, instant yeast, salt, and sugar. The whole wheat is not a health concession. The panaderos in the small towns outside Mérida use a darker flour than central Mexico does. It gives the loaf its color and its slight bite. Use a soft pastry-quality whole wheat if you can find it, not the coarse stone-ground kind.

2. 2

   Work the lard into the flour

   Add the softened manteca de cerdo to the dry ingredients. Rub it in with your fingers, the way a panadero does at five in the morning, until the flour looks like coarse, slightly damp sand. La manteca es el sabor and it is also what gives this bread its shelf life. A loaf made with vegetable oil goes stale in a day. A loaf made with manteca lasts three. That is why the panaderías yucatecas have used pork fat for generations.

   Good manteca smells faintly of pork and tastes clean. If yours smells rancid or like the supermarket plastic tub, find a better source. A carniceria that renders its own is worth the trip.
3. 3

   Add the wet ingredients and knead

   Make a well in the center. Add the egg and the warm water. Mix with a wooden spoon until a shaggy dough forms, then turn it out onto an unfloured counter. Knead by hand for ten to twelve minutes, or on a stand mixer with the dough hook for seven minutes on medium. The dough is ready when it pulls cleanly off the counter, feels smooth and slightly tacky, and stretches into a thin window without tearing. If it is sticky, resist the urge to add more flour right away. Keep kneading. Most of the time the flour will catch up.

4. 4

   First rise

   Grease a bowl with a little manteca. Shape the dough into a ball and turn it once to coat. Cover with a clean cotton servilleta, not plastic. The Peninsula is humid and the dough breathes better under cloth. Let it rise at warm room temperature for ninety minutes, or until doubled. In Mérida this happens fast. In a cooler kitchen, give it two hours and trust the dough, not the clock.

5. 5

   Shape the loaves

   Turn the dough onto a lightly floured counter. Divide into six equal pieces, about 175 grams each. Round each piece into a tight ball by cupping your hand over it and dragging it across the counter in small circles. The surface should tighten under your palm. This is the shape they sell in the panaderías outside Mérida, small enough for one family meal, large enough to tear and share. Place the rounds on a parchment-lined sheet pan dusted with cornmeal or flour, leaving four fingers of space between each.

6. 6

   Second rise

   Cover the loaves with the same cotton servilleta and let them rise for forty-five minutes to an hour. They are ready when they have grown by half and the dough springs back slowly when poked with a fingertip. While they rise, heat the oven to 425F (220C) with a baking stone or heavy sheet pan on the middle rack. A village horno holds heat from the floor up. A home oven needs the stone to imitate it. No me vengas con atajos on this one. A pan placed on a cold rack will give you a pale bottom and a sad loaf.

7. 7

   Score and bake

   With a sharp blade or razor, score a single shallow cross on top of each loaf. Brush the tops with the melted manteca. Slide the sheet pan onto the hot stone. Bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, rotating once halfway through, until the loaves are deep golden brown and sound hollow when tapped on the bottom. The crust should be firm but not hard. The interior crumb should be tight and slightly yellow from the egg and the lard.

8. 8

   Cool on a woven petate or rack

   Transfer the loaves to a woven palm petate or a wire rack. Let them cool for at least twenty minutes before tearing. Cutting them hot will compress the crumb and you will think you did something wrong. You did not. The bread needs to set. Así se hace y punto.

Chef Tips

• •Find a carniceria that renders its own manteca de cerdo. The shelf-stable tubs at the supermarket are a compromise. If you cannot find rendered lard, render it yourself from pork fatback. It takes an afternoon and lasts months in the refrigerator.
• •Do not substitute butter or shortening for the lard. You will get a fine bread, but you will not get this bread. The flavor is wrong and the keeping quality is gone. La manteca es el sabor and that applies to bread as much as to carnitas.
• •The whole wheat flour is not optional. Yucatecan bread is darker than central Mexican pan blanco. If you use 100 percent white bread flour, you will get a paler, lighter loaf that does not belong to the Peninsula.
• •If your oven runs cool, push the temperature to 435F. The wood-fired hornos of the Peninsula bake hotter than most home ovens and the crust needs that heat to set properly.

Advance Preparation

• •The loaves keep at room temperature, wrapped in a cotton cloth (never plastic, it sweats), for three days. This is why the manteca is in the recipe.
• •The dough can be made through the first rise, then refrigerated overnight. Bring back to room temperature for thirty minutes before shaping.
• •Stale loaves are not failed loaves. Tear them into caldo de pollo or use them to soak up the achiote juices from cochinita pibil. In Yucatán, no bread is wasted.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 165g)