Traditional Baking at Lake Chapala

Two days a week, José Manuel Mora Velásquez continues a tradition that has been part of his family for more than 80 years. Long before dawn, he begins preparations for baking pan de tachigual, a type of bread so distinctly regional that Sr. Mora says that it has only been made in San Juan Cosalá and in Ajijic, (in the state of Jalisco, Mexico), although it's sold in other towns along the north shore of Lake Chapala.

In years gone by, natives of those two towns did not allow a wedding, baptism, First Communion or confirmation to pass without tachigual as part of the festivity rituals. Although times are changing, even today the most traditional celebrations of these life passages include the humble local loaves.

Sr. Mora showed me around the tiny bakery at his home in Ajijic. The ceiling is low and the only light comes from windows without glass. Loaves of freshly baked tachigual are piled high on a wooden shelf while dough rises in a warm corner, out of the way of any passing breeze.

Tachigual loaves stuffed with nuts and raisins rise on the bakery shelves.

"The oven is heated only by wood. It's not easy to keep a good supply of wood, but we collect it from all over the area. People usually tell me where a dry tree has fallen, or where someone has cut down a tree that will burn well when the wood is dry."

"Which days of the week do you bake?" I asked.

"Wednesdays, like today, and Saturdays. It's very time-consuming work and you have to pay very close attention to the masa (dough) or it won't turn out right." Sr. Mora turned to peer into the oven as he spoke to me.

"A full twenty-four hours before I bake, I have to prepare the harina fermentada (starter). It's a mixture of flour and water. I mix that, and then it sits in the warm bakery for a full day before I can use it for the bread.

"Early in the morning of the days I bake, I mix the dough. It's made with the starter dough I made the day before, plus additional flour, eggs, sugar, and lard. Some of the dough is made with whole wheat flour and some with white flour. The white flour dough has white sugar, raisins and toasted nuts blended into it. The whole wheat loaves are sweetened with piloncillo (cones of brown sugar)."

Sr. Mora showed me how he weighs each of the ingredients to make the bread. "I don't measure. The bread is better if each component is weighed. How many kilos of flour I use depends on how many loaves I need to bake on any given day. Usually I make enough dough to produce 400 loaves a day.

"Baking this traditional way is different from baking in a modern oven. The first difference, of course, is that the oven is made of bricks and clay. It's shaped like a beehive. And as I said before, I use wood fire for the heat. Temperature control is more difficult. I have to start the fire about three hours before the dough starts to bake. That's so the oven will reach the right temperature. It takes two hours for the coals to be at the right stage, then another hour for the temperature to go down enough so the bread will bake in the right amount of time."

Tachigual bakes right on the floor of the brick beehive oven.

I looked into the oven, which has no door, and saw that the baking bread was beginning to turn golden brown. "I don't see a thermometer, Sr. Mora. How do you know when the oven has reached the right temperature to begin baking?"

Sr. Mora checks the oven to make sure the temperature is right.

He laughed. "I put one loaf in to bake. It should be ready in about 30 to 40 minutes. If it takes longer than that, I put more wood on the fire. If it bakes too quickly, I wait a bit for the temperature to go down. Then I try again. Of course I've been doing this for so long that I can almost always tell when the temperature is right, but I still bake a trial loaf to be sure."

I asked Sr. Mora if there were other tachigual bakers in Ajijic. "Yes, my cousin still makes this bread the old way. She lives on Calle Constitución and bakes on Tuesday and Thursday. I think we're the only two left in Ajijic who bake this bread. There is a family in San Juan Cosalá that still has a bakery, but I don't know them personally."

Ojitos (little eyes) rise near the warmth of the oven.

An article about the San Juan Cosalá bakers appeared several years ago in the Lake Chapala Spanish-language weekly newspaper, El Charal. At that time, Sra. Margarita Villalobos and one of her daughters were baking pan de tachigual for distribution and sale in San Juan, in Nestipac, and in Jocotepec. Sra. Villalobos told El Charal that as a young girl, she had learned to make tachigual from her mother. Her methods hadn't changed over the years, she said, because making the bread in the traditional way gives it the delicious flavor that people want. Sra. Villalobos said that someone had offered her an electric mixer to help beat the dough, but she was not interested in changing her style of preparation. "Other bakers make it using the same recipe I do, but they don't mix it by hand. Their results aren't the same," she reported.

Sr. Mora's baking sheet is made of a flattened 5-gallon square tin can.

Sr. Mora tells a similar story. "A woman named Teresa taught my aunt how to make tachigual, and my aunt taught me," he reminisced. "And now there's no one left to teach. My children don't want to be bakers. It's sad to think that I might be the last in the family to keep this tradition alive."

Although Sr. Mora graciously told me about his work and the traditions of the bread he makes, there was never a time when he was not also paying strict attention to the rising loaves, the bread baking in the oven, and the bread that was cooling on primitive wooden shelves along three walls of the bakery. I watched quietly for a while as Sr. Mora worked.

With one eye on the oven, he picked up an escobilla (double-ended straw brush) and started rhythmically sweeping the wood ash from each cool loaf of tachigual. As he cleaned each loaf, he placed it in a pile.

When he noticed that the bread inside the oven had turned a deep golden brown, he set aside the escobilla and picked up a pala (literally a shovel, but in this case it resembled a long-handled wooden pizza peel). He used the pala to remove a metal tray holding the ojitos from the oven and placed it on a table near where I was standing. In one experienced and skillful motion, he scooped up as many small panes de tachigual as the pala would hold and transferred them from the oven to a shelf for cooling. With a similar movement, he loaded the pala with unbaked loaves of tachigual. Gently shoving the pala as far into the oven as he knew it needed to go so that the bread would bake evenly, he snapped his elbow back and the raw loaves landed evenly spaced on the oven floor. In just a few minutes he demonstrated skills he had acquired over his 22 years as a baker.

The sweet smell of baking tachigual was making me very hungry. "Sr. Mora, do you take all of the bread to be sold at stores here in town?" I was hoping he'd say no, and I was not disappointed.

"A lot of people come here to the bakery to buy bread. And the boys take some to be sold out on the streets in that washtub..." he gestured to a galvanized metal tub in the corner by the oven. "And of course some does go to stores around town."

"What does the tachigual cost?" I was fingering some coins in my pocket.

"The small loaves are four pesos, the big ones are ten pesos. And those mini-loaves are two pesos apiece. I sell the miniatures to mothers for little kids."

I bought four loaves, one large and three small. The large one came home with me and I took the three small ones to share with my neighbors. My car held the tantalizing scent of the fresh-baked bread for two days.

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Comments

[Risto Leppälä]

I seen that all of the bakery equipment there look really classing and some old for sure all the bread there a really taste good.I remember my gran father he also have a bakery and all is bakery equipment are old but still making a good and tasty bread.

[Shannon Casey]

Thank you Cristina,I love your posts that come with a history lesson.