Mexico City: My Bakery

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

Every day, I go to the same bakery. In addition to offering the prosaic bread I seek, it seduces its visitors with sweet concoctionary dreams.


From the crowded sidewalk, the interior looks like this:

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

Bolillos, white and brown, nestle in a wide, deep nursery of sorts, sometimes warm from the oven, where they await plucking by those of us ready to gobble them up.

Mexico City bread. November 2018.

A brief tour in this video below:





Let´s talk costs of my daily bread:

• White bolillos x 2 = 3 pesos
• Wheat bolillos x 2 = 5 pesos
• Seeded, flat roll x 1 = 5.5 pesos
• Total for day = 13.5 pesos = 66 cents US

I am put in mind of the Bowie Bakery in El Paso´s Segundo Barrio.

Life Hacks From the Road: Bread Bags

Sadly dry bread. Mexico City. November 2018.

In Mexico City, I went every morning to a local bakery for my day's bread.

The bread baggers asked: Paper or plastic?

We should get paper, right? Of course. Not only for the environment but for the bread.

Well, damn.

I discovered that putting my bread in a paper bag for the day resulted in dry, crumbly bread before the day was out. Putting my bread in a plastic bag resulted in soft, chewy bread all day.

Counter-intuitive to me.

My solution: Re-use my plastic bag on my daily bread pick-ups.

It could be most of the world already knew this about bread.

Antigua, Guatemala: Yogurt and Bread

Generally, I live on a pretty straightforward menu, which consists of some protein, bread, lots of vegetables and fruit. Strong-flavored cheese at times.

No worries, I'm not about to embark on a litany in adoration of the latest trend based on junk-science, whether it be paleo, blood-type, gluten-free-for-everyone, raw food, whole30, or whatever else the shit is out there being hawked by modern-day snake-oil sellers these days. Also, I'm not a foodie, at least not in the sense of being a gourmet.

I'm just offering a preface to get to today's topic: yogurt and bread.

Because although my dietary regimen is pretty boring by most measures, I love the food I eat. And when a particular item on my usual menu surpasses my expectations, I get a little swoony.  Don't even get me started on the wonders of the snappy, sweet, jumbo carrots you can get inside Antigua's cavernous municipal market.

Or how I practically licked the plate at an Italian restaurant in Antigua, where I lapped up the pasta in an Alfredo sauce with such enthusiasm, a dish I hadn't had in maybe a year or more, that the gentleman I was with appeared a little alarmed at just how much I enjoyed that meal. I looked him straight in the eye and smiled without shame.

But anyhoo, on to the main point of this post.

Yogurt. I don't remember if I stumbled on the yogurt at Doña Luisa's little storefront bakery adjacent to the well-known restaurant, or if someone recommended it to me, but Goddamn, that yogurt is good! I tried the blackberry (mora) yogurt first, as a bit of nostalgia from my trip to Ecuador in my youth, where the memory of whipped, frothy blackberry juice I bought there has stuck with me ever since. The texture of Doña Luisa's yogurt is thick and a little granular, so in addition to a delicious flavor, it has a luscious mouth feel.

It's more expensive than any of the other yogurt  I tried in Antigua, but exponentially richer in flavor and feel.

Bread. By pure chance, on a certain day at a certain time on a certain stretch of sidewalk near Central Park in Antigua, I bought a bag of rolls from a woman who sat on said sidewalk. I am rolling my eyes heavenward just thinking of them. Round, kind of flat, with a bit of chewiness, and just a little sweetness. 

Sadly, after I consumed all of the rolls, I couldn't find them anywhere again. Anywhere! I didn't even know what they were called. In describing the rolls to just about everyone I met, someone would offer a name for them, and I'd hie myself to the multitude of bakeries in town and ask about them. I tried a couple that were similar in looks and shape. No!

Eventually, after some goose-chasing leads, I got a couple of new name possibilities from my Spanish teacher: "pan de Patzún" or "pan de maxtate." Bingo. The reason I couldn't find this bread in any of the bakeries is because it isn't sold in any of the bakeries in Antigua (at least not that I found). It is a local bread from the countryside, let's call it a farmer's bread, perhaps considered too rustic by city folk.

With the new intel, I continued to ask around where I might find this bread. A new lead came to me, I think it was from the guy who sells bus tickets to Lake Atitlan in the cafe across from a local supermarket: "If you go over there (pointing to an area outside the supermarket) on Tuesday afternoons at about 3:00, no, maybe 4:00, you'll find a woman who sells this bread." I learned from this gentleman, or perhaps another informant, that the bread is normally sold inside the massive Antiguan municipal market, brought in from the countryside only on the big market days.

Guatemalan bread: Pan de maxtate or pan de Patzún. Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

I couldn't find this woman on the designated afternoon, so to the municipal market I went. I asked this vendor, and that vendor, and the other vendor. "Pan de maxtate? Pan de Patzún?" No, no, no. Then someone pointed deeper into the darkness of the market, "Back there." I kept asking. Finally, a woman indicated she knew where I could find this bread, and she led me there. Aha! A woman had baskets of it! The holy grail!

I bought a huge bag of the rolls to hopefully last me the duration of my visit. And it did.

Guatemalan bread: Pan de maxtate or pan de Patzún. Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Guatemalan bread: Pan de maxtate or pan de Patzún. Antigua, Guatemala. April 2016.

Sigh. Mission complete.

Jeanerette, Louisiana: The Flashing Red Light

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

Michel, one of my Louisiana cultural interpretors, told me about this bakery in Jeanerette where, if you see a red light flashing outside its door, it means there's bread fresh out of the oven, hot.

My brain collects factoids such as this, caching them into some data closet, so I heard the bakery information, and then forgot about it. Until, that is, when a few weeks later, on a Saturday morning, I was driving from Lafayette to Morgan City on Highway 182, entered into Jeanerette's business district - almost empty of pedestrian or vehicular activity - and saw a red light incongruously sticking out over a storefront sign.

How odd. Ohhhhh, LeJeune's Bakery! Was the light supposed to be flashing? Didn't remember, but parked the car, and went in.

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

Whereupon I saw warm, plump rolls just asking to be plucked. Too bad the bakery's Generation 6 happened to walk up right then, only to inform me the rolls had been promised to Generation 4, his grandmother.

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

I couldn't buy a roll, but the owner's son graciously allowed me to look at the bakery's heart, where the bread is made.

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

Here's a good video the regional news did on the bakery:

Note that one pronounces the family name lazhern and not lazhune. There's a good newspaper story about what the bakery did during ingredient shortages in World War II.

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

Will Generation 6 go into the business? Too soon to tell, but there's a precedent of non-linear transfers, so if the current direct line doesn't take over the business, maybe a cousin will.

LeJeune's Bakery, Jeanerette, Louisiana

The bread tastes as good as it looks in the picture above.