Pan Latino for Bread Baking Day # 27: Pupusas & Rosquillas

Ricetta in italiano per Rosquillas e Pupusas.

Gretchen Noelle from Canela and Comino is hosting Bread Baking Day # 27, the monthly event focused on baking and on bread started by Zorra some years ago.
She has chosen Latin Bread as theme of the month, and is asking for baking products originated in Latin America, in those countries where the “romance” languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French) are primarily spoken.

As I am following Joan in her Culinary Tour 2010 through Central and South America, I will bring some bread I discovered travelling in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Pupusas

Pupusas are very popular in El Salvador, a sort of hand made flat bread.
They may be stuffed with different ingredients: chicken or turkey or ground beef, cheese, sauteed green peppers, squash or beans.
The pupusa is so fundamental to the cuisine of El Salvador that the country has even declared November 13th "National Pupusa Day".
Pupusas are traditionally made by slapping the dough from palm to palm to flatten it out ... but rolling pin is allowed!

You need:

100 gr sliced bacon
half onion, chopped
half teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon extravirgin olive oil
3 cups of flour
1 ½ cup water
half teaspoon salt

- Fry bacon, onion and cumin in oil until onion is translucent.
- Mix the flour and water together in a soft dough by hand or with a mixer.
- Divide the dough into 10 equal balls.
- Roll out each ball into a disk about 1 cm. thick and pour about 1 tablespoon of bacon, fold in half to cover the filling.
- Roll again to form a disk about 15cm diameter. If a little filling comes out, do not worry, it's normal.
- Heat a pan over medium high fire. Grease the pan with a little oil and cook each pupusa until it is lightly golden on both sides. Grease the pan again for another pupusa.
- Bake in oven at 180° for a few minutes to finish cooking.

Rosquillas

Rosquillas have originated in Somoto, a town in Northern Nicaragua. They are a sort of ring shaped buiscuits made of corn, cooked in a wood oven and then served with coffee. I was not so keen to try with coffee and better had them like appetizers.

Ingredients in this recipe are arranged to our modern life-style, because in Nicaragua they follow the recipe starting from pure corn: they boil it and then take it to the mill to grind. It would sounds absurd in our countries but in Nicaragua all women at 4 am bring their boiled corn to the mill to prepare then all their traditional dishes like the famous tortillas.

You need:

250 g corn flour
30 g lard
25 g margarine (I used butter)
250 g Philadelphia cheese or cottage cheese
a pinch of salt

- Put all ingredients in a kneader and mix until well amalgamated.
- Shape the dough into sausage of about 20cm. long for large rosquillas, half for baby rosquillas. Join the two ends forming a sort of donut. Well, you can see from the pictures, the dough was not that compact and firm, it crackled easily. I had to wet a bit my hands and work on a slightly floured surface to roll it into sausages. maybe a little water in the dough could have helped.
- Bake in hot oven at 180° for about 20/25 minutes, depending on size.
- They can be served warm or cooled.

BBD # 27 Round up