Bolio

It's our bread store!

I was introduced to the BOLIO, when The Farmer and I were dating, and we would make trips to Mexico to see his family. A loaf of bread was something that you couldn't just go to the store and purchase. It was something that the Mom's in town spent good time each week making for their families. The BOLIO, a baguette type bread, is the common bread Mexico, everyone eats them. They are only second to the tortilla. Now, BOLIOS are not all the same. Each bakery or Panaderia, has their own version. I have eaten alot of BOLIOS, and La Guadalupana makes the best! I have stood in line to purchase them.

Just in the last few years, chain type stores entered our community. It is kind of like when a Walmart moves into a small community.....it is great in some ways and very damaging in others. The neighborhood tortilla shops and bread shops are being affected.

It is really sad to me!
This man is a Panadero, a man who has made a career out of making the BOLIO, and other Mexican sweet breads and cookies. He has been a Panadero for 25 years.

He didn't measure anything. He made wonderful doughs by touch. He knows just how each dough should feel. He worked the different doughs on the most fantastic large piece of wood, almost like an old door. It was seasoned like nothing I have ever seen. It has been used in this panaderia for atleast 50 years....maybe more.


The BOLIOS, and the other items found in the bakery, are all baked in this brick oven. Just lately they switched from actual fire for heat in the over.....to gas. They have little tricks to know when the perfect temperature has been reached in this oven. They don't use thermometer to gauge the heat.

This oven was built by the great-grandparents of the man who runs the bakery today.


This is an exterior view of the oven they use everyday!

In the bakery, you find several different types of cookies. Made from different types of doughs. They are not overly sweet, but they are tasty!

The Darlings, when they were small, loved a trip to the panaderia for one of these cookies, or a cookie called the cochinita, a dark molasses cookie cut in the shape of a pig.

Oh those are the best!

The Boy couldn't wait until we got home to eat one of the fresh BOLIOS, I think he actually at about 3-4 on the way. There is nothing like a fresh BOLIO from La Guadalupana!

Those BOLIOS make the best sandwiches ever....

like the one above, roasted turkey with all the fixins'.

We wouldn't even think of having a hamburger with a BOLIO!

I told The Darlings, that I have really watched life change in our little community through the years we have lived here. It was not uncommon to see mule/horse pulled carts up and down our streets. We don't see that anymore.....and it makes me sad. I hope that The Darlings will be able to take their children to La Guadalupana one day and share a BOLIO and a few memories, just as I did with The Boy!