Baking School

This morning Brennan and I had the pleasure of waking up bright and early (4 am) to take our own personal bread making class from Zoila and Francisco. They own a bread shop (Panaderia), which is connected to their restaurant La Mano Amiga. Usually waking up this early is just routine for the retired teachers, but for us it was EARLY! However, so worth the lesson that we were taught. And we have pictures to prove it! So let me take you through the steps to make your own bread if you ever are up to the challenge. Warning they've been doing this for over 20 years now so all their measurements are eyeballed. I wasn't able to get the exact amount of all the ingredients. The amount also serves a whole towns worth of people so if your wanting to make smaller batches the amount of ingredients would change drastically.


STEP 1: Wake up....ha that's not really apart of the steps, but it's probably the hardest part.
                Step 1: dump out the flour and mix all the ingredients in the middle of the flour pile.
                Dough ingredients include:
                                -Flour
                                -Salt/Sal (they eyeball the amount like professionals)
                                -Sugar/Azucar (another eyeball measurement)
                                -Butter/Mantequilla (10 sticks, come on we already knew it wouldn't be 
                                  healthy right)
                                -Eggs/Huevos (10 eggs)
                                -Yeast/Levadura
                                -Coloring/Colorante (just a tiny amount to give the bread the yellow color)

                                                                 Brennan waking up

STEP 2: Mix the ingredients with water
                2 medium gallons for 20 lbs of flour

STEP 3: Kneed the dough thoroughly so that everything is mixed well

STEP 4: Separate the dough into sections in order to roll the dough into thinner strips.
                  Then roll dough into long thin strips (just like you use to do with playdough as a
                   kid).

STEP 5: Pinch off little pieces of the long thin strips of dough.
                 Roll each of these pieces into thin strips making sure the middle is larger than the
                 ends.
                 Put 10 rolled pieces of dough in each row of the baking pan.

STEP 6: Let the dough sit for 1 hour minimum, let them grow, and observe the size.

                                               We showed them how to make pretzels

STEP 7: Put the dough in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

STEP 8: Consume and enjoy!

This was such a fun process to do with our host family. We had 2 great hours of chatting, learning more about their culture, and of course learning how to making bread. If any of you want a personal lesson like ours you are going to have to visit.

One more little surprise. From the left over dough I was able to make the most delicious Hojaldre (fried dough) by rolling balls of dough into flat thin oval shapes. Of course in pure Panamanian style after rolling the dough flat all you need to do is fry it. Makes for the best and most unhealthy breakfast, but we just can't seem to get enough of this stuff.

                                                               Our typical breakfast