Customers will smell freshly baked pan dulce, or Mexican sweet bread, before they even see Pan Y Cafe’s sage green signage.
The new panaderia in downtown Santa Ana has been open for roughly two months and, on any given weekday morning, the scents emanating from the building attract students on skateboards, courthouse employees and families from the neighborhood in equal measure.
“Our main goal is good bread at an affordable price,” said Samuel Ruiz, Pan Y Cafe owner. “But I also want to get other cultures to enjoy what is such a nostalgic thing for me and a lot of Mexicanos.”
The panaderia has been an ambition for the restaurateur, who has owned the Santa Ana contemporary Mexican cafeteria Café Cultura for nearly 10 years.
“At Cultura, we would sell pan dulce from local bakeries, but we always wanted to make it ourselves,” Ruiz said. “This was always the dream, to do it right next door.”
Samuel Ruiz, the owner of Pan Y Cafe, holds a tray of traditional Mexican sweet bread at his Santa Ana panaderia on Wednesday.
(James Carbone)
First, the pandemic prevented the business owner from taking the leap, then construction work for the OC Streetcar slowed business in the downtown area.
Ruiz recognized a new enterprise could be a gamble at the time and wondered if he should “double down when things are so slow.”
When the lease on the space next door became available, Ruiz took it as a promising sign and got to work developing the panaderia of his dreams.
The bakery, outfitted in light grain wood and sage green decor, features an open kitchen where guests can watch bakers roll out dough and shape cookies. The goods are stocked on wooden shelves with glass windows, lit from within to showcase the items inside.
Customers begin their experience by picking up a metal tray and a set of tongs to select their own pan dulce. After they’ve made their choices, they pay at the counter, where they can also order beverages like café de olla, hot coffee brewed with cinnamon sticks.
Although Ruiz is the head baker, he doesn’t consider himself a chef. He traveled throughout Mexico for research and developed the recipes with the help of his sister, a former pastry chef, and through much trial and error.
A barista adds fresh chocolate croissants to a display case for guests at Pan Y Cafe in Santa Ana Wednesday.
(James Carbone)
“I love cooking and I love baking, but when you are scaling it out and making large quanities, it took us a while to get it where I wanted it,” said Ruiz. “I think the heart of it all is the concha. We worked really hard on that.”
Pan dulce is a general term that can refer to many types of Mexican pastries, although probably the most well-known is the concha, a round sweet bread topped with crunchy sugar that typically resembles a seashell.
The pan dulce Pan Y Cafe specializes in is a curated selection of favorites that remind Ruiz of growing up in Mexico City.
“I didn’t want to do a bunch of things just OK — I wanted to have 10 or 12 items and do them really well,” he said.
The daily menu includes la mantecada de elote (sweet corn muffin), crispy orjeres and galletas de canela (cinnamon shortbread cookies derived from polvorones, often referred to as Mexican wedding cookies).
There are also puerquitos, a pig-shaped cookie usually made with molasses that’s been baked with Pan Y Cafe’s house piloncillo syrup instead for a deeper, richer flavor.
On the non-traditional side, guests can find chocolate croissants, guava cheese rolls and a cheddar and chorizo biscuit, garnished with a single red Fresno chile.
Baristas help young guests with their Mexican sweet bread order at Pan Y Cafe in Santa Ana on Wednesday.
(James Carbone)
Of course there are conchas too, in both chocolate and vanilla, soft with a generous covering of sugar.
“Pan dulce is a hybrid of old French stuff,” said Ruiz. “Like the concha; its origin is brioche, and you can see how we changed it culturally. I think that’s why people really like our concha, because it is very light, pillowy and you can eat three of them.”
When the panaderia first opened, it offered a matcha concha, made with ceremonial grade matcha. Ruiz said the green pastry was popular at Café Cultura for St. Patrick’s Day and he fine-tuned the recipe to bring the pastry to Pan Y Cafe.
While matcha isn’t a traditional concha flavor, he said Mexican culture is becoming more connected with matcha than one might think.
“We are a culture that unfortunately deals a lot with things like high cholesterol and heath issues, and in Mexico City, especially from the older generation, I heard ‘yo tomo matcha, no tomo café (I drink matcha, I don’t drink coffee),’” Ruiz said.
The matcha concha was meant to be a seasonal offering, swapped out for a calabasa or pumpkin concha for October, but customers clamoring for the specialty creation convinced the bakery to bring it back to the menu.
“It’s about the people, and the people really want it,” said Ruiz. “We are already making conchas all day, so it’s not that hard to keep it.”
A variety of pan dulce, or Mexican sweet bread, is available at Pan Y Cafe in Santa Ana.
(James Carbone)
For the upcoming Dia de los Muertos holiday, Pan Y Cafe is offering its own take on pan de muerto, a round roll made with citrus zest and topped with a cross, dusted with sugar.
“We will have pan de muerto all the way up to Noche de Altare. I wish we could have it longer, but we are so limited on space that if I keep that, I can’t start working on Rosca de Reyes (Three Kings Bread),” Ruiz said.
In the meantime, he is inviting the neighborhood to come out for “Comunidad Fridays.” That’s when, from 5 to 8 p.m., Pan Y Cafe will give out free conchas, with no purchase necessary.
Rather than placing an ad or paying a social media influencer, Ruiz said sharing his product with the local community is the best advertising. Whether it’s their first time or they are returning customers, he believes in the power of the concha.
Traditional Mexican sweet bread is baked fresh at Pan Y Cafe in Santa Ana.
(James Carbone)
“I know the concha will win them, so I am willing to give it for free,” said Ruiz. “Plus, for my local clientele, the people that live around here, it’s a nice little treat.”
Pan Y Cafe is located at 324 West 4th St., Santa Ana. Hours are 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily.