Why You Should Never Bake in Mexico
She’s actually laughing at me.
Mexican cuisine is world-renowned, internationally celebrated. Once you live in Mexico, you would be foolish not to take advantage of the local ingredients and try your hand at making enchiladas, pozoles, tacos al carbon and an endless variety of salsas.
What you won’t be doing a lot of in Mexico is baking.
Given my well-documented enthusiasm for Mexico, her people and her culture, I hope her devotees will forgive me for what I’m going to expose about her baked goods: They are terrible. After partaking in Mexican bakery offerings a few times, you will wonder why Mexican bakers attempt it at all.
Sure, the conchas and coyotas may look good, but you will find these pastries are all the same taste in different shapes; flavorless to anyone who knows a good oatmeal cookie. The only things rich about baked goods in Mexico are their traditions, much like King Cakes are to Mardi Gras, colorful and flavorless. (If this blog inspires a helpful refute from a famous Mexican baker or Enrique Olvera, I will be nothing but grateful.)
There are two types of television competitions you will never see - Mexican extreme-sport competitions (Much of their daily life is an extreme sport, why compete?) and Mexican bread-baking. Don’t think you can do any better either once you arrive here. Tristemente, you will not be able to make a decent cookie or loaf of bread in Mexico for the same reasons Mexicans can’t.
Rather than following my own steadfast rule in Mexico - that if a Mexican does/doesn’t do something you think would be logical to do/not do, there’s a damn good reason for it, I actually believed I could master American baking in a Mexican kitchen. I am that stupid. While I’ve never attempted making bread in Mexico, I’ve tried making a multitude of other baked goods only to be soundly thrashed. Here are the issues as I have experienced them, and they are major.
Sweetness
One reason for my dissatisfaction with what I find in bakeries is my American addiction to refined sugar. Mexicans find American-style cookies too sweet. It’s true. We’re not happy unless a cookie makes our teeth hum.
Butter
high-quality butter is essential to many baked goods. Even imported butter in Mexico, if you can find it, for a reason I’ll never understand, lacks the richness of the butter I am used to. Remember when your parents had their oleo phase? Typical Mexican butter tastes more like Crisco than butter. Visually it’s butter. But only visually.
Brown sugar
You never realize how much you love brown sugar until a country takes brown sugar away from you. The soft sugar at home, with a texture and color akin to soil in both color and meaningfulness in life, is not available. Perhaps the Mexican government knows a highly-addictive substance when it sees one and has banned its importation as a narcotic. What is sold as brown sugar (azucár moreno) may be brown, but it ain”t brown sugar.
Mexican Ovens
Ovens in a typical Mexican kitchen are basically a large tin box set on top of a gas coil. They often breathe like the dragons of your childhood nightmares. Many ovens will have no more than low/medium/high settings. For anyone coming to Mexico, I urge you to bring a full set of kitchen thermometers. You still won’t be able to bake a loaf of bread, but it will save you from heartbreak in countless entrees and side dishes.
Mexicans don’t bake in their homes. They go to bakeries and buy their bad baked goods there rather than make bad baked goods themselves. Bakeries don’t carry anything other than white and wheat bread (integral) in various shapes. If you live in a coastal area like I do, baking bread is a near impossibility due to the high humidity. The dry ingredients soak up humidity from the air, causing it to clump up.
You can find excellent cakes at pricey stores that specialize in cakes. Even these shops can’t give you a great cookie. But it’s the artisan breads that are all the rage at home that you will miss the most as there’s really no substitute for them in Mexico.
You’d think commercial kitchens would be able to overcome the oven issue. Maybe it’s a matter of demand. Tortillas are less expensive and more popular, an ancient staple. I have grown to love tortillas as much as a good crusty bread. You can put anything in a fried tortilla; stir fried-vegetables, scrambled eggs, leftover hash. They are incredibly versatile.
But in spite of this love I’ve cultivated for tortillas, when a Mexican friend once brought me a loaf of pumpernickel bread from Guadalajara, I brushed aside the main course I’d taken the afternoon to prepare from the center of the table, instead placing the loaf of bread as the entrée as if she had brought a fatted pig on a spit.
Like any good drill sergeant, I have broken your spirit in order to build you back up in a way that will enable you to survive under these harsh conditions. You can satisfy your addiction for richer cookie fare with other desserts. Many are baked but don’t require the precision nor our beloved butter and brown sugar.
Pies, flans and Tres Leches cakes (which capitalize on Mexicans’ love of condensed milk) are the most popular. Simple pie crusts (not graham) can usually be found in grocery stores for recipes like Nutmeg-Maple Cream Pie {below]. Plain pie crusts are generally available in larger grocery stores.
Your Canadian expat neighbors in Mexico will decry your concept of maple syrup as you will decry the Mexican concept of brown sugar. However, the maple syrup in Mexico is adequate for this pie, even winning over my Canadian business partner who guards her Canadian syrup as Americans do spice rubs. You will survive.
Nutmeg-Maple Cream Pie
(Recipe Credit: New York Times Cooking Section)
INGREDIENTS
¾ cup maple syrup
2 ¼ cups heavy cream
4 egg yolks
1 whole egg
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pre-baked 9-inch pie crust
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, reduce maple syrup by a quarter, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in cream and bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.
In a medium bowl, whisk together egg yolks and egg. Whisking constantly, slowly add cream mixture to eggs. Stir in salt, nutmeg, and vanilla.
Pour filling into crust and transfer to a rimmed baking sheet. Bake until pie is firm to touch but jiggles slightly when moved about 1 hour. Let cool to room temperature before serving.
Related Links
I am not unaware of the official position regarding breads and baking in Mexico, I simply beg to differ.
And as The Arnold reminds us, we should not drink and bake. - YouTube
A wonderful website full of delicious Mexican alternative recipes like flans and cheesecakes.
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About the author:
Kerry Baker is the author of several books, If Only I Had a Place and The Mexico Solution. The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life though part-time life in Mexico is her most recent book.
If Only I Had a Place, recently updated, is a how - to on renting in Mexico with both the opportunities and risks. The Mexico Solution is your reference guide to the how to set up life in the best of both worlds. Her most recent work is a cookbook, The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico is a collaboration to help you cook and eat healthy in Mexico.