Conchas
Tuesday, October 3
We made it and arrived in the next country of our trip: Mexico! Christoph and I have wanted to travel here for a long time and now the time had finally come. After a five-hour-long flight from Colombia we eventually arrived in Mexico City.
There we had booked a beautiful Airbnb for a month so we could work from home and explore the city after work. Our expectations for Mexico City were quite high, as we had already met many people on our trip who loved that city and highly recommended it. We also wanted to come here to visit our friend Mario, whom we met in Medellín, Colombia a few weeks earlier.
Due to our late flight, we arrived at our apartment in Mexico City in the middle of the night and were just happy to finally be able to sleep after the rather long journey. The next morning we left the apartment and withdrew money to have cash in the country's currency and then needed to find a market/supermarket to buy some groceries.
Luckily in our neighborhood there were a few supermarkets, many smaller markets and even more street food stalls. While we were shopping in a well-stocked supermarket, one corner of the store particularly caught my eye: the in-house bakery, which offered various types of bread, cakes, donuts, cookies and much more. Having just spent a month in Colombia, where even in the big cities it was really difficult to find bread and baked goods made from wheat rather than corn, the baking section at the Mexican supermarket was a dream come true! Of course, we immediately bought a large loaf of bread and over the next few weeks tried all the pastries, which were all delicious.
In the next weeks of our trip through Mexico we learned that in Mexico, pastries are particularly popular and, in our experience, it is unimaginable for many people in Mexico to drink a coffee without “algo para dipear” = “something to dip” (in this case meaning to dip some pastry into your coffee). The most popular baked goods here are “Conchas”, which translates to “shell” and are fluffy and sweet yeast rolls with a piece of buttery sugar cookie dough baked on top. This means the Concha pastry is a soft yeast roll and a sugar cookie combined into one pastry. Before baking the sugar cookie dough on the yeast roll is cut into several times which leaves the surface of the cookie looking like a sea shell which is why these pastries are called “Conchas” = “sea shell”. “Conchas” are generally available with either vanilla or chocolate sugar cookie dough on top and many Mexicans have very strong opinions about which of the two flavors is the right one.
Another type of pastry that Mexicans love is “Pan de Muerto” = “bread of the dead”. Despite the somewhat strange-sounding name (at least for us Non-Mexicans), Pan de Muerto is a delicious, sweet yeast dough roll, which is usually flavored with spices and orange peel. The special thing about this pastry is that the Pan de Muerto is only available around the holiday “Día de Muertos” = “Day of the Dead”. Día de Muertos is considered the most important holiday in Mexican culture and is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd every year. On these days, families remember and honor the deceased of the family who, according to Mexican belief, return to earth once a year (1st and 2nd of November) to visit their families. However, Mexicans deal with death differently than we Germans do and the Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico are characterized by happiness, parades, brass bands and dancing through the city. Starting mid-October people slowly prepare for the Day of the Dead and so in October and November you can buy “Panes de Muerto” in almost every bakery. Since we really wanted to experience the Day of the Dead festivities, we had planned our stay in Mexico in October and November which meant we not only did attend the Day of the Dead celebrations but we were also able to eat the delicious Panes de Muerto. Now we get why Mexicans love the Panes the Muerto so much!
