Rosca Salada Yucateca

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Stand mixer with dough hook, or a wide wooden bench for hand kneading
• •Two heavy baking sheets lined with parchment
• •Clean cotton servilleta yucateca for covering the dough
• •Pastry brush for the egg wash
• •Wire rack or woven palm petate for cooling

Instructions

1. 1

   Wake the yeast

   Warm the milk until it feels like the inside of your wrist, no hotter. Hot milk kills yeast and gives you a brick. Stir the sugar and the yeast into the milk and leave it for ten minutes. You want a soft foam across the top. If nothing happens, your yeast is dead. Start over with new yeast. There is no fixing this later.

   The Yucatán climate is humid and warm. The dough will move faster than what a recipe written in a cooler kitchen tells you. Watch the dough, not the clock.
2. 2

   Build the dough

   In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour and the fine sea salt. Make a well in the center. Pour in the foamed milk, the two whole eggs, and the manteca de cerdo. Mix with a wooden spoon or the paddle attachment until a shaggy dough forms. The lard will look streaky at first. Keep going. It works itself in.

3. 3

   Knead until smooth

   Switch to the dough hook and knead on medium for eight to ten minutes, or turn out onto a lightly floured counter and knead by hand for twelve. The dough should pull away from the bowl in a single mass and feel soft, springy, and slightly tacky. Not sticky. If it is sticky, add flour one tablespoon at a time. La manteca es el sabor and it is also what gives this dough its silky pull. Do not skimp.

4. 4

   First rise

   Form the dough into a smooth ball, place it in a lightly greased bowl, and cover with a clean cotton servilleta. Let it rise in a warm spot until doubled, about an hour and a half. In a Yucatán kitchen this happens in an hour. In a cool kitchen up north, give it closer to two. The dough is ready when you press a fingertip in and the dent stays.

5. 5

   Shape the roscas

   Punch the dough down gently. Divide it in half. Roll each half into a rope about 50 centimeters long, then bring the ends together and pinch them shut to form a ring. Place each rosca on a parchment-lined baking sheet. The hole in the middle should be wide, about the size of your fist, because the dough will close in as it rises. A rosca with no hole is a bun. Así no es.

6. 6

   Second rise

   Cover the shaped roscas with the same cotton cloth and let them rise again for forty-five minutes to one hour. They should look puffed but not slack. Press a fingertip gently into the side. The dent should fill in slowly, not bounce back fast. That tells you the gluten has relaxed and the bread will tear soft, not tight.

7. 7

   Wash and salt

   Heat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius (375 Fahrenheit). Beat the egg yolk with the tablespoon of milk. Brush the roscas all over with the wash, going slowly into the seams so nothing gets missed. Scatter flaky sea salt generously over the top. This is rosca salada. The salt on the crust is not garnish, it is the name of the bread.

   Use flaky salt, not table salt. Table salt dissolves into the wash and disappears. You want crystals you can see, that crack when you bite the crust.
8. 8

   Bake until deep gold

   Bake in the center of the oven for thirty to thirty-five minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. The roscas should be deep amber gold, not pale, and they should sound hollow when you tap the bottom. A pale rosca is an undercooked rosca and the crumb will be gummy. Trust the color.

9. 9

   Cool and tear

   Transfer the roscas to a wire rack and let them rest for at least twenty minutes before tearing. The crumb is still setting inside. In Mérida the roscas cool on a woven palm petate next to the panadería window while the morning customers wait. Tear, never cut. Serve with strong coffee or chocolate. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Use real manteca de cerdo, the kind rendered from pork fat, ideally from a carnicería. The shelf-stable hydrogenated stuff in a tub is not the same product and the crumb will tell on you.
• •The dough wants warmth and humidity. If your kitchen is cool, set the bowl on top of the warm oven during the first rise, or run a low oven for two minutes, turn it off, and let the dough rise inside. Yucatán humidity is not a metaphor, it is part of the recipe.
• •Rosca salada is at its best the day it is baked. Day two, refresh it for five minutes in a hot oven before serving. Past day two, tear it into chunks and use it for sopa de pan or to soak up the broth of a frijol con puerco.

Advance Preparation

• •The dough can be mixed, kneaded, and given its first rise in the refrigerator overnight. Pull it out one hour before shaping so it comes back to room temperature.
• •Baked roscas keep wrapped in a cotton cloth at room temperature for one day. For longer storage, freeze whole and refresh in a 180C oven for eight minutes from frozen. Do not refrigerate baked bread. The crumb goes stale fast in the cold.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 87g)