These elegant loaves, mildly flavored with onion and garlic, reflect the sophistication that the French influence brought to Mexican baking. They are served as an accompaniment to the cream soup course- another Gallic contribution- at dinners celebrating weddings and other important events.
On the day that I spent at “La Chiquita”, Don Pepe and his nieces were filling a special order for mochos for a formal dinner. I was surprised to find, upon tasting the finished product, that the bread tasted of neither onion nor garlic, but rather had a pleasingly suble, savory flavor.
If you prefer a stronger tasting bread, add more onions and garlic. This recipe makes 10 loaves, but can be successfully cut in half. You may want to make all of it and give some as gifts. You’ll need:
Ingredients:
A double recipe of bolillo dough (see above)
- 1 cup olive oil
- 1/2 lb. onions, sliced in rings
- 6 cloves garlic, peeled
- 1 1/2 teaspoons freshly ground pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground allspice
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 3/4 cups vegetable shortening
- 4 eggs
- 1.6 oz. (2 3/4 cakes) compressed yeast
- 8 1/2 cups flour
Preparation:
Prepare the recipe for bilillo dough until the point where it has doubled in bulk.
Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil until the onion is soft.
Liquify the onion and garlic, with the oil in which they were sauteed, in a blender.
Turn the dough out onto a floured board or table, add liquified onion mixture, pepper, allspice, sugar, shortening, eggs and yeast.
Mix all of this together, kneading with hands as you add the flour. Knead well for 10 minutes.
Shape, using kneading motion, into ten equal-size balls of dough.
Elongate them into loaves approximately 6″ long, cutting diagonal slits across the top if desired, or pat them out into 1/2″ thick rounds and fold them inward, by taking the dough from the edge between thumb and forefinger and folding it in toward the center.
Repeat this process six or seven times, untill the rounded loaf is folded into pie-shaped sections.
Cover the loaves and let them sit 1/2 hour.
Place them on baking sheets and bake them in a preheated 360º oven untill the tops are golden brown.
They will not have crispy crusts like bolillos do, but instead will have the consistency of dinner rolls.
Link to source article:
Mexico’s irresistible bakeries: Las panaderias
Published or Updated on: October 28, 2014
