Our New Favorite Bread: Gallinas

We discovered our new favorite panaderia (bakery) by chance.

 (The moto is parked right in front of it in the picture). Michael was walking to work one morning, stopped by this panaderia, and bought some bread. It caught his attention, partly, because it was the first local bakery we have ever seen that has a guard out front (usually in the mornings). We quickly discovered they are one of the few in our area that make things with whole wheat flour (integral). If that wasn't awesome enough, we discovered our new favorite bread.

They're called gallinas (hens), as the baker explained to us, because of what look like plumas (feathers) on the bread. Pan dulce (sweet bread) is super common and cheap here, and eaten during coffee breaks or as breakfast. You can usually buy a few simple pieces of pan dulce for less than 50 cents. I like pan dulce if it's super fresh, but after a day or two they are stale and chalky to me.

But these gallinas are so much better than regular pan dulce. They are slightly sweet, like pan dulce, but softer, like the bread part of a cinnamon roll. The outside is hard, covered in sesame seeds, with a slightly sweet coating, and the inside is the delicious, soft but thick bread. And, bonus: they are 2 or 3 times bigger than regular pan dulce.

These things are so good, and are 2 for 5Q (1Q=about 12 cents), which means these cost about 30 cents each. When I think about the $5 pastries at Starbucks, this is an amazing deal. I find myself wanting to walk to work just so we have an excuse to stop by and buy them. They are that good. Que rico!