How to Make Rodrigo Cervantes’ Conchas, the Ultimate Mexican Breakfast Sweet Bread

I once worked a week in the pastry section of a now defunct classic European restaurant: Short crust, puff, choux pastry, sourdough baked just before service. Temperature of the butter, temperature of your hands, the oven, the moisture, feeding the dough, folding the dough, laminating… The whole thing was made from scratch. It was peaceful, repetitive, organized and very precise. I loved it at the time, but for the life of me I cannot remember a thing.

When lockdown came, I jumped on the sourdough craze … I got a starter from Dusty Knuckle, a really nice bakery in East London and managed to kill it before I could bake the first bread. 

When Bad Manners started as a little kiosk in the middle of a cemetery serving Mexican food I wanted to have a display of conchas of all colours and flavours. Unfortunately the British weather, the space, and the DIY nature of the operation did not allow me to make that dream a reality. All I managed was to ungracefully fail at every attempt. (There were many.)

In a nutshell: I can’t bake. 

So for this recipe I had to lean on my beautiful wife for guidance. Unlike me, she is precise, methodical, organized and stubborn enough to see this through.

Conchas are sweet breads or “pan dulce” made with an enriched dough and topped with a sugar crust cut in the shape of a shell, and so the name concha (Spanish for shell). It’s a breakfast and coffee thing in Mexico. You probably want a “cafe de olla” or a hot chocolate with that.

If you go into a panadería in Mexico (if you manage to find an old school un-gentrified one) you’ll grab a beaten aluminium tray and some metal tongues from a stack in the entrance and go around the shelves filled with all sorts of pan dulce. You’ll be smothered by the smells of sugar, yeast and flour, sweeter and stronger than any french patisserie or British bakery. Pick and choose, put it all on the tray and head to the till. Everything goes into a thick brown paper bag and it’s cheap and delicious. 

Anyway. Here’s the recipe.

The Recipe

The dough

• 500g plain flour (sifted)
• 11g instant yeast
• 150g caster sugar
• 180ml milk (warm, not hot)
• 2 eggs
• 100g unsalted butter
• 4.5g salt
• 10g vanilla (scraped from inside the pod)

The crust

• 150g icing sugar
• 150g plain flour
• 150g margarine (veg)
• 5g vanilla extract (even if using other flavouring, vanilla just makes it better)
• 2.5g Cocoa powder, matcha or whatever you choose as flavouring

Step 1: Sponge
Make the sponge: Mix the yeast (11 g) and 3 tbsp of flour (taken from the ingredients list) with 1 tbsp of sugar and the milk (warm ~30 ~35 C). Let is sit for 1.5 – 2 hours.

Step 2:
Mix the flour, sugar, salt and vanilla with the sponge, incorporate the butter and mix until it becomes non sticky. Rest for 1-2 hours.

If you got a stand mixer, then this part is easy; if you don’t, then find a nice podcast and prepare yourself to knead. 

Pour the flour over a working table, make a hole in the middle and drop in the sponge mix and eggs. It should look like a volcano. Around the base of this flour mountain pour the sugar and the salt. Mix slowly and eventually knead, making the dough stretch until you stretch enough that it doesn’t break. Be patient, don’t add extra flour. It’s a dirty and sticky job. Just stick to your guns.

Step 3: Crust
Mix the sifted icing sugar, sifted flour and margarine (I used Flora) until the paste is like play-doh. Split into two, mix one half with the vanilla and the other with the cocoa powder. Split into 16 even sized balls (8 vanilla and 8 cocoa). Or whatever flavour you prefer.

Step 4: Conchas
Work the batter to let the bubbles and air out, then split in 16 even sized balls, flatten slightly and then flatten the edges (like an empanada). Brush a bit of margarine to help the crust stick.

Flatten the crust balls with a tortilla press or a rolling pin and place on top of the conchas. It should be slightly over the circumference of the concha as these will rise.

Mark them with the concha cutter or by hand with a knife.

Let them rest / rise for 1 hr.

Bake at 165 C for 16-18m. Now brew your coffee.

Rodrigo Cervantes is from Mexico City, but lives in east London with his family. He is head chef and co-founder of Bad Manners. Read more of his work on Something Curated here.

All photos by Rodrigo Cervantes.