PHOTOGRAPH BY EVA KOLENKO 17EAT THE WORLD
and melted American cheese, a decadent treat
made even more so by the traditional snowfall
of confectioners sugar I dusted over the top.
Fluffy and pleasantly sweet, mallorcas travel
well across breakfast cultures. Originally called
ensaïmadas, they were first documented in the
late 18th century—though they likely had been
made for centuries before that—when a Fran-
ciscan friar began collecting and recording a
number of recipes from the Balearic Islands,
the eastern Spanish archipelago that includes
Mallorca. As he noted, bakers there would roll out
the yeasted, enriched dough; spread it with lard
(c a l led saïm in Catalan, from which the bread’s
original name derives); shape it into its signature
coil; and bake it until risen and golden. According
to Tomeu Arbona, owner of El Fornet de la Soca
bakery in Palma, Mallorca, the bread’s first bak-
ers were likely Sephardic Jews. “Ensaïmadas were
originally a sweet bread for the Sabbath,” he says,
“similar to what we would now call challah.” WhileA LONG AND
WINDING ROAD
In my kitchen in Oakland, California,
I preheated my cast-iron comal and
slipped a pat of butter onto the surface.
I’d just gotten home from New Orleans,
where at an artisanal bakery I’d pur-
chased a mallorca, a sweet spiral bun
made by a baker from Puerto Rico, who
was in turn following a centuries-old
formula that can be traced back to a tiny
island off the coast of Spain. Remov-
ing the pastry from my backpack, where
I’d kept it safe and unsquashed on the
2,000-mile journey, I sliced it in half and
set both sides face down on the griddle.
I made a sandwich like the ones you’ll
often find in Puerto Rico, where my
family is from, with some crispy bacon BY ILLYANNA MAISONETFrom Spain to Puerto
Rico and beyond,
the journey of sweet,
spiral mallorca breads
is still unraveling.