Mexican Pan Dulce

Pan Dulce is a Mexican sweet bread.  (In fact, "Pan Dulce" literally translates as "sweet bread".)  Down here in the desert Southwest, it is very easy to find it in grocery store bakeries.  The topping on the bread comes in a variety of colors, usually pink, white, yellow, or chocolate brown.

I found a few recipes for Pan Dulce on the internet, but this one from Allrecipes was the one I finally settled on making this time.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

1 cup milk
6 Tablespoons butter
1 package active dry yeast (for me, a little less than a Tablespoon--I kind of eyeballed 2/3 of it.)
1/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
5 cups all-purpose flour

For the topping:

1/2 cup white sugar
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
4 Tablespoons butter, softened
2 egg yolks

The recipe said to heat the milk, then add the butter, stir until melted, and leave to cool, then dissolve the yeast into this mixture.

Ugh.  It drives me crazy to wait for things to cool, so I look for workarounds.

I decided to make life more simple on myself by using powdered milk and lukewarm water, instead of milk from the refrigerator.  This water could then be used to dissolve the yeast, along with the sugar.  I also decided to melt the butter separately and add it to the dry ingredient mixture apart from the yeast mixture.  In this way, I wouldn't have to sit there, wondering when the milk and butter mixture would actually reach the correct temperature to not kill the yeast, which has sometimes been a tricky proposition.


Yeast, sugar, and water mixture on the left, melted butter on the right.

In a stand mixer, add the salt, melted butter, and, if you are using it, powdered milk.  Add a cup of the flour and mix with a bread hook.  Add the eggs and mix again.  Add the yeast mixture and mix again, adding more flour, until the dough pulls away from the bowl and is well-kneaded.  (For a review of mixing a bread dough in a stand mixer, see here.  If you want to mix it by hand, see these general directions or look at the original recipe link.)

A note here:  I was counting on the flour and powdered milk to help mitigate any extra heat from the butter, which I had heated just to the point of melting.  If I had added the melted butter into the mixture too hot and then added the eggs, I might have ended up with bits of cooked egg in my dough, which was not what I wanted.  Be aware of this possibility when working with warm melted butter and eggs.

Cover the dough and allow it to rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about an hour.

An hour??  Remember, this dough has not only eggs, but also butter, which means it takes a little longer to rise than a dough with no eggs or butter.

By the time my dough had finished rising, I had gone on a walk with my husband, lifted a few weights at the community weight room, gone to the local convenience store, walked home carrying jugs of milk (we counted it as part of our workout), taken a shower, and totally pampered myself with lotions, etc.

I'm not exactly sure how much time had passed, but it was closer to two hours, despite my pellet stove adding heat to my house.  Good thing I had covered it with plastic wrap, then a kitchen towel, so the top of the dough didn't end up drying out.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces and roll them into balls.

With a rolling pin, flatten the rolls into oval shapes and place them on a greased baking sheet.

Time to rise again!  Cover the dough and allow to rise until doubled, about 40 minutes.  (This time, I covered them with wet paper towels to avoid drying out.  Rising time was a little over an hour.)

While the dough is rising, it is time to make the topping.  Here, the Kitchen Artiste in Training helps me separate the eggs.

Mix the sugar, flour, and softened butter in a bowl until well-blended.  I mixed the sugar and flour, then added the butter cut in small pieces.  Reaching deep into my memory from making Scottish scones (which I haven't posted yet), I put my fingers into the bowl and rubbed the butter into the dry ingredients until it was evenly distributed, nice and crumbly.

Beat the egg yolks with a fork to break them up, then add them to the flour mixture and mix.

This was the result.  I decided to leave it plain, instead of using food coloring to make it pretty or cocoa powder to make it chocolate.  (I can hear my family now . . . "What?  She passed up an opportunity for chocolate?")

When the bread dough has finished rising, it is time to sprinkle on the topping.  But when I got ready to sprinkle the topping on the rolls, I realized I had a problem.

How can someone sprinkle a crumbly topping on a roll with a somewhat rounded top and expect it to stay on the roll, instead of falling all around the roll?

Obviously, you can't.  Even the rolls which still maintained a certain amount of flatness on the top had a tough time keeping this topping on top, and a lot was being wasted on the pan.

I had read in the comments beneath the recipe a suggestion to add a little milk and make the topping into a sort of paste, then spread it on the rolls, so I decided to try it.



It sounded simple, but it proved to be much more difficult than it sounded.  How do you spread a somewhat sticky substance on a risen roll without smashing the roll?  Very, very carefully . . . and it might have a difficult time coming off the spatula and sticking to the roll . . .

I topped some of the first tray of Pan Dulce with the crumbly version and some with the paste version.  But after baking, I realized there was another problem relating to mixing two varieties of toppings on the same tray:  the toppings don't brown at the same rate.

To be honest, I didn't like either of those results, because neither was like the topping we were used to seeing in the store.  The crumbled topping tasted fine, but it didn't have the delightful texture I wanted.  And the texture of the paste was not satisfactory at all.  Partly because I had had to remove the tray before it had properly browned, it did not have the crunch we associate with Pan Dulce.

Back to the drawing board.

I remembered reading somewhere that another way of topping Pan Dulce is to roll the topping out with a rolling pin and lay it on the roll.  I had actually tried that way with a different recipe some time earlier and had not been too pleased with the results, so I had been reluctant to do it again.  But at this point, I decided it was time to cave and pull out my rolling pin.  Perhaps this topping recipe would work out better than the other one had.

I took some of the crumbled topping and squished it together in my hands, then rolled it out thinly with my rolling pin.

I placed the topping on the rolls and baked them.

At last!  Something which looks closer to the Pan Dulce in the store!  If you want the straight lines you frequently see on bakery Pan Dulce, cut the lines into the topping after rolling it and before placing it on the rolls.

So we ended up with quite a variety of topping styles, but at least I figured out which one I like the best.  Next time, I think I will divide the topping and try a little variety.  Maybe I'll put cocoa in some, to make the chocolate topping.  Or maybe I'll add cinnamon to some, which sounds like it would be very, very good.

When the girls tasted it, the first thing one said was, "That doesn't taste like Pan Dulce!"

"That," replied my husband, "is because you've only eaten them stale."

The ones in the store are usually very dry, while these were much softer.  The topping was delightfully sweet and buttery, with enough crispness in the ones where the topping was rolled out to crack and crunch just a little.  They were definitely delicious, and almost all were gone by the end of the day.

It's just as well they were, because they are definitely better the day they are made.