A cooking platform built around craft, culture, and the stories behind what we eat.
Created by
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.
This is from Oaxaca. From the panaderías of the Valles Centrales, from Tlacolula and Zaachila and Mitla, where lamination is done by hand at four in the morning and the lard is rendered in the back of the bakery from local pigs.
A regañada is a sheet of laminated dough, rolled until you can see through it, baked until it crackles, and dusted with canela sugar. It looks simple. It is not. The flake comes from the manteca de cerdo and the cold rest between turns. Use butter and you have made a French pastry. Use vegetable shortening and you have made nothing worth eating. The Oaxacan panadera will tell you the same thing: manteca, only manteca, and let the dough rest as long as it asks for. La manteca es el sabor.
On Día de Muertos, the regañadas go on the altar. One pastry for each soul expected home that night. Stacked next to the pan de yema, the chocolate de agua, the mezcal, the cempasúchil. They are not decoration. They are food for the dead, who arrive hungry from a long road. The crackle of the pastry under a thumb is part of the welcome. My mother was from Jalisco and she did not make regañadas, but I learned them from doña Eulalia in Mitla in 2009, who learned them from her mother, who learned them from hers. Doña Eulalia rolled hers so thin you could read the newspaper through them. She told me, sin prisa, mija, sin prisa. The dough does what the dough does and you wait for it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
This is not a Mexico City recipe. This is not pan de muerto. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Oaxaca.
The regañada belongs to Oaxaca's panadería tradition, a fusion that took shape after the Spanish brought wheat, lamination techniques, and the convent baking traditions of Andalusia and Castile to the Valles Centrales in the 16th and 17th centuries. The name 'regañada,' from the verb regañar (to scold), is generally traced to the cracking, scolding sound the layers make when broken, though some Oaxacan bakers maintain the name comes from the scored lines that look like reproachful furrows. As part of Oaxaca's elaborate Día de Muertos altar tradition, recognized within UNESCO's 2008 inscription of Indigenous Festivity Dedicated to the Dead as Intangible Cultural Heritage, regañadas function alongside pan de yema and pan de muerto as one of three distinct breads with separate ritual roles, a regional precision that the homogenizing national imagination of Mexico City pan de muerto tends to obscure.
Quantity
500 grams (4 cups)
plus more for dusting
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1 tablespoon
Quantity
200 grams
at cool room temperature
Quantity
2
Quantity
1
Quantity
180 milliliters (3/4 cup)
more as needed
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
150 grams
very cold
Quantity
1
beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for the wash
Quantity
2 tablespoons
Quantity
1/2 cup
Quantity
1 teaspoon
for dusting
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| all-purpose flourplus more for dusting | 500 grams (4 cups) |
| fine sea salt | 1 teaspoon |
| granulated sugar | 1 tablespoon |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard)at cool room temperature | 200 grams |
| large egg yolks | 2 |
| whole large egg | 1 |
| cold watermore as needed | 180 milliliters (3/4 cup) |
| mezcal or aguardiente | 2 tablespoons |
| manteca de cerdo for laminatingvery cold | 150 grams |
| large eggbeaten with 1 tablespoon water, for the wash | 1 |
| ajonjolí (sesame seeds) | 2 tablespoons |
| granulated sugar for dusting | 1/2 cup |
| ground canela (Mexican cinnamon)for dusting | 1 teaspoon |
In a wide bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and the tablespoon of sugar. Add the 200 grams of room-temperature manteca and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse cornmeal. The fat coats the flour and that coating is what gives the regañada its flake. No me vengas con atajos. Do not use butter and do not use vegetable shortening. Manteca de cerdo. La manteca es el sabor.
In a small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, the whole egg, the cold water, and the mezcal. Pour into the flour mixture. Bring the dough together with a wooden spoon, then turn it out onto the counter and knead just until smooth, about three minutes. The dough should be firm but pliable, never sticky. Add a tablespoon more water only if the dough refuses to come together. Wrap in a clean cloth and rest for 30 minutes at room temperature. The rest relaxes the gluten and the lamination later will not fight you.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the rested dough into a rectangle about 40 by 25 centimeters and 5 millimeters thick. Spread one third of the cold laminating manteca evenly across the surface in small dabs, leaving a thin border. Fold the dough into thirds like a letter, business fold. Turn it 90 degrees, roll out again to the same rectangle, dab with another third of the cold manteca, and fold. Repeat one final time with the last third. Three turns, three lamintations. Wrap and refrigerate for at least four hours, ideally overnight. The cold rest is not optional. The fat needs to firm up between the layers or the regañadas will not flake.
Take the rested dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit for 10 minutes so it rolls without cracking. Divide into 18 equal pieces, about 50 grams each. Cover the pieces you are not working with so they do not dry out. On a lightly floured surface, roll each piece into a thin oval or rectangle, about 12 by 18 centimeters and just under 2 millimeters thick. You should be able to see the shadow of your hand through the dough when you hold it up. This thinness is the regañada. A thick regañada is no regañada. Asi se hace y punto.
Lay each rolled piece on a parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving a finger of space between them. Brush each with the egg wash. Scatter ajonjolí across the surface. With the tip of a sharp knife, score three or four shallow diagonal lines across the top, cutting through the egg wash but not all the way through the dough. The score lets the steam escape and gives the regañada its characteristic crackled top. Prick the surface several times with a fork so it does not balloon.
Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (400 degrees Fahrenheit). Bake the regañadas for 12 to 15 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the tops are deep golden brown and the layers have visibly separated along the edges. They should be crisp through, with no flexible spots. A regañada that bends is underbaked. The kitchen will smell like toasted lard and sesame, the way a panadería in Tlacolula smells before the sun is up.
Mix the half cup of sugar with the canela in a small bowl. While the regañadas are still warm from the oven, dust the tops generously with the cinnamon sugar. The residual heat helps the sugar cling. Let them cool completely on a wire rack before stacking. Stored in a tin lined with cotton cloth, they keep crisp for up to two weeks. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.
1 serving (about 73g)
Culinary guides, cultural storytelling, and the editorial depth that makes cooking meaningful.
Discover Culinary Explorer
Chef Lupita
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
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
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
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.