Conchas
Conchas are one of my most favorite sweet breads to have is conchas—also known as pan dulce or Mexican sweet bread. It goes best with a cup of coffee or a hot chocolate. They are a relatively new addition to my bread resume even though millions of Mexicans and Mexican Americans have enjoyed conchas as a breakfast item for decades. Conchas were never a part of my heritage and I can’t say that I learned about conchas on my own initiative. So where and how did I learn about these popular breads? Let me tell you.
Conchas, or pan dulce, is a Brioche-like, Mexican, sweet bread bun blanketed in a just-moist-enough topping of butter, sugar, and spice mixture. The topping is colored and stamped, or scored, in pattern resembling a seashell, thus revealing the origins of its name (concha is Spanish for seashell!) Flavors of the topping can vary from cinnamon to chocolate to vanilla to lemon, to name a few of the most common. These generous-sized sweet buns are fantastic with coffee, or better yet, Mexican hot chocolate!
Living in a small Northwest Ohio town, my family became close friends with another family originally from Mexico. Our children started playing together and then we all were spending time together. At the time, I was making different breads for friends and family and I found a recipe, by accident, that reminded them of bread they had in Mexico. The recipe was from a book I found a library book sale titled ‘Baking Bread with Father Dominick’, and none of the recipes were specifically for Mexican breads.
While my wife was familiar with pan dulce, having parents from Texas and a mother who taught Spanish, my first experience of conchas has been relatively recent and not at all brought about through my own initiative. As with several of my current repertoire of bakes, my entry into concha-making begins with my relationship with good people. To tell you the story of how I got into baking conchas, I need to tell you about our friendship with our close family friends, Javier and Catalina Paredes.
We met Javier and Catalina (who we call Katy, pronounced Kah-tee) at a park in our hometown on one of the evenings we took our son to play. They were there with their daughter, Evelyn, who, along with our son, was a little over a year old at the time. Since the park had only two baby swings, that put us in close together for the evening, such that my wife, who was picking up her Spanish-learning again, overheard them speaking to each other in their native language. She worked up the nerve to say to them that she was learning Spanish, to which Javier replied, “Oh yeah? Okay…Go ahead.” She somewhat nervously introduced herself and my son and I, after which Javier responded, “…that ain’t bad.” Katy was learning English at the time and so she and my wife became fast friends, each wanting to practice with the other. Our kids have grown up together and remain best friends to this day.
Fast forward about five years from this park meeting and we are looking at a time when I was getting more serious about my bakes and eager to share my progress with neighbors and friends. I was working on honing a honey oatmeal bread (that you can read more about here) and I brought a loaf over to Javier and Katy. When he tried it, Javier was pleasantly surprised by its taste and texture, in that it reminded him of the bollilos sold out of neighbor’s garages in his hometown in Guanajuato, Mexico. I had stumbled onto something unexpected, began to research these small football-shaped sandwich loaves, and brought several attempts to get closer to the traditional bolillo over to the Paredes. It was a this point, seeing all this effort, that Javier nudged Katy, “Hey, see if you can get him to try conchas.” She passed on the nudge to my wife, who encouraged me, and thus began my research and many attempts at these now neighbor favorites (Once Javier and Katy shared them with their families and we began seeing their ability to connect us with our other Latinx neighbors, they became a regularly-shared treat.)
To this day, every time I bring over some conchas, the Paredes’ eyes light up. It is a joy to give them something that reminds them of home, and we have grown to love them with our morning coffee as well.
Whenever I had time, I would make this same bread and share it with them or leave them several loaves for the week. It was a great way to show friendship by sharing homemade bread. The bread was good and I don’t believe anyone complained, but since I showed that I had an interest in baking something other than American white bread for white American people, a special request came to me indirectly; “Ask [Brad] to make conchas”—the message was delivered by my wife.
Conchas? What were those? Where could I find a recipe? I asked myself and was intrigued at a new bread challenge. I looked on YouTube and in Chrome and found a recipe that I thought had the right relative amounts of ingredients and got started. The first batch did not look good but tasted great! I eventually got better at making these breads.
When I brought over the first batch to our friends, I expected the bread to taste good but I didn’t expect the excitement with which the breads were received. What I didn’t understand was how much conchas had become a part of daily culture. Eating a concha with a cup of coffee is a practice that millions of people have each and everyday; it was a cultural practice I had not come to appreciate. My conchas were not the best conchas ever made, but my conchas allow those who remember having a concha with coffee every morning to experience it again.