When the brothers David and Jose Cáceres, who grew up in Mexico City, settled in San Antonio in 2013, they explored the area the best way they knew how—by taste. “We drove around and stopped into cafés and restaurants to eat three or four or five times a day, getting familiar with our new home,” Jose says.
They soon realized they had something to add, setting up a stand at the Quarry Farmers & Ranchers Market to sell bread and pan dulce—pastries like tequila almond croissants and traditional conchas—all inspired by the eighteenth-century Epoca de Oro of Mexican bread making. Within a year, they opened their brick-and-mortar La Panadería near the market, followed by a second location downtown. Both now draw lines out the door for their sweets, sourdoughs, and birote, a baguette native to Guadalajara. “It’s the idea of how bread was baked two hundred years ago in Mexico,” says David, the head baker. That age-old method includes letting the dough rest for up to seventy-two hours before baking it to crisp perfection in a stone oven.
Lucky for home bakers, David’s basic sourdough recipe doesn’t require a stone oven or week-long preparation—just a Dutch oven and a little bit of patience.
