Bread in Uruguay

Posted on February 22, 2007
Filed Under Food and Drink, Vocabulary | 2 Comments

pan.JPGMan does not live by bread alone, but with some butter and red wine, I think it’s doable. If you enjoy good bread and are curious about what you can expect in Uruguay read on. I’ll cover red wine and maybe even butter in a future posting.

If you are the type that still buys pre-sliced bread in a plastic bag, you’ll have a great opportunity to ditch this bad habit whenever you get to Uruguay. If like the French, you enjoy a fresh, crisp baguette with your café au lait, you’ll feel right at home.

The most common bread in Uruguay is the flauta. It is essentially a french style bread, shaped like a bâtard and weighing around 250g, or a little over half a pound. It is crusty and tasty, and needs to be purchased daily since it gets stale quickly. The good news is that in Montevideo there are bakeries and small groceries stores just about every two blocks. So you won’t need to walk far.

There are several breads that use the same type of dough as the flauta. The most common ones are: the baguette or pan frances grande, the flautin, the felipe (see picture, right), the porteño and the pancito. These breads have a similar taste, but vary in shape and size. The baguette, you know, is like a baguette. Virtually identical to the ones sold in France. The flauta is fatter and somewhat shorter than a baguette and is the standard bread in Uruguay. The flautin and the felipe are about half the weight of a flauta, but the flautin is made thin and long and the felipe is shaped like a small flauta. The porteño looks like a fat bread roll and the pancito or pan mignon is a small bread roll. All simple french style breads cost 45 pesos per kilo. So a flauta with 250g costs a little over 11 pesos.

If you buy your bread at a small supermarket in Montevideo, there is a good chance that you will be buying bread from Pagnifique. This company employs the same pre-baking and fast freezing technique that has French bakers up in arms. The bread baking process is finalized at the supermarkets throughout the day, as needed. The end result is that you get fresh, crispy, warm bread more often than not. For science’s sake, I conducted a taste test between two baguettes, one from Pagnifique and one from a bakery in Pocitos. Both were excellent, however I thought the one from the bakery was better. The crust was crustier and the bread as a whole tastier. In all honesty, I am not sure I would have noticed the difference if I had not tasted both side by side.

There is a different class of breads made with milk that results in a spongy bread and a soft crust. In this class, the pan de molde is perhaps the closest to the regular American bread. It is sometimes sold at supermarkets as pan americano. Pan lactal or pan de sandwich is even softer. It is very white and has a very thin, soft crust.

Also in the class of milk breads are the all the soft buns usually sold in bags or packages. The most common of these breads are: the tortugas which are soft hamburger buns and the pan de Viena which has the shape and size of a hotdog bun. Pebetes are small roundish soft buns, Pan Catalan is also a soft bun a little larger than a hotdog bun.

There are a few baked goods that are usually eaten instead of bread. The best examples of those are: the cubanito, the juanito (see picture, left) and the galleta de campaña, They are sold fresh at most bakeries and are great bread substitutes.

The pita (or pan árabe) in Uruguay is much thicker than what you might expect. Even the pita fina or pita finita (thin, very thin pita) is not quite as thin as you’d find elsewhere.

If you happen to be in Uruguay around Christmas time, it will be impossible to miss the pan dulce. It is a special bread made with dried fruits and is normally consumed between Christmas and the New Year. No, it is not a fruit cake! However, it is similar to the Italian Panettone, but in my opinion, not nearly as good.

Below is some vocabulary that may be useful if you ever decide to buy bread while in Uruguay:

Rebanadas finas – Thin slices
Pan rebanado – Sliced bread
Pan integral – Whole wheat bread
Pan de centeno – Rye bread
Pan de maiz dulce – Corn bread
Pan envasado – Bread in bags or packages
Pan americano – American style bread
Agrio – Sour dough
Pan de salvado – Pseudo-integral bread
Pan de sémola – Semolina bread
Panes tiernos – Soft breads
Pan de molde – Form bread, American style bread
Pan de tostadas – Bread for toasts, see Pan de Molde
Pan de sandwiche – White, soft form bread used for making sandwiches
Pan marsellés – Medium size white bread shaped like two joined parallel cylinders
Pan de leche. – See pan de sanwiche
Pan lactal – See pan de sandwiche
Pan de sésamo – Bread with sesame seeds
Pan casero – Home baked bread
Trenza – Bread that has a top that appears pleated
Pan árabe – Pita bread

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2 Responses to “Bread in Uruguay”

  1. Enzo on April 10th, 2007 7:22 am

    That was a great post. I have a new favorite bread web site. I love breads and that is a great link to Pagnifique. I have been trying for years to recreate a good quality ‘Pane Calabrese’ that I used to get while living in Italy without any luck. I look forward to enjoying all the fresh breads in Uruguay.
    Note: It is possible to live on bread, butter, fresh tomato and good wine. Smile

  2. Nick on April 10th, 2007 7:23 am

    I got hungry reading about all the good breads.

    Enzo, hmmm fresh tomatoes. That would be worth a new post all by itself. I think we ought to add some olive oil and Aceto di Modena to your list, and perhaps a cheese or two.