Instructions: Deep in the back of Mi Pueblo supermarket on Story Road in San Jose is a little bit of home for customers from Mexico and Central America: the fragrant bakery, a pastry haven known in Spanish as the panader(acu)a (pronounced pah-nah-deh-REE-a).

The baked goods found here and at countless panader(acu)as throughout the Bay Area evoke images of long weekend mornings lingering over strong coffee and of family visitors bearing culinary gifts, perhaps pig-shaped puerquitos, sugar-dusted polvorones or smiley-faced las caritas cookies.

By tradition, each pastry sells for a mere 33 to 50 cents. At those prices, these Latin American delicacies are certainly among the sweetest deals in town.

Panader(acu)as use a modified form of self-service. Grab a pair of tongs and a tray and step up to the cases. Choose your pan dulce, picking them up with the tongs and setting them on the tray. Take the tray to the counter, where the clerk will wrap and tally your purchases.

Leonardo Mora, head baker at this Mi Pueblo (there are four local stores in the privately owned mini-chain) and son of a panader(acu)a owner in Guadalajara, Mexico, pointed out the most popular pan dulce (pahn DOOL-say), or sweet breads.

At the top of the list is the conchita (cone-CHEE-ta), also known as the concha, a seashell-shaped confection popular throughout Mexico. Cake-like conchitas are easy to spot with their rounded tops featuring graceful, curved lines.

Also popular throughout Mexico are enredos (en-RAY-dose), which are shaped like pretzels and have a crisp texture resembling French puff pastry.

The cuerno (KWEAR-noh), or horn, is another pastry showing a French influence. Its shaped like a croissant, but the similarities stop there. Its a pleasantly sweet faux croissant with a cake-like texture.

Comfort foods

At least two popular types of pan dulce evoke American comfort foods with their creamy vanilla custard centers. Light, delectable empanadas de leche

(em-pah-NAH-thahz de LEH-che), little turnovers hiding sweet custard fillings, are reminiscent in flavor of Boston cream pie, without the chocolate. and round, flat chamucos (cha-MOO-kohs) are shaped like cheese Danish but feature a vanilla filling.

Familiar to all are jelly rolls, which go by the amusing name of nino envuelto, roughly translating to wrapped-up baby.

Each panader(acu)a typically sells a smattering of pastries that are popular in the specific regions of Latin America from which much of their clientele originates. Thus, Moras store offers the sema, a large, round, sugar-dusted cookie native to the state of Michoacan in west-central Mexico.

Mora has started a bit of a trend by creating round flores, a flat pastry with a pineapple center, instead of the traditional square version. Looking in other local panader(acu)as, you may find round flores as other bakers pick up on Moras Mi Pueblo innovation.

Then there is the pan dulce traditionally intended for children, with puerquitos (pwhere -KEE-tohss), or puercos, at the top of the list. These delightful dark brown cookies are shaped just like little pigs as seen from the side. They figure in the memories of many a Latin American adult.

Grandpa encouraged us not to eat the ears and snout right away, so we carefully started with the rump each time, says Al Amador III, now a manager of intranet content at RHI in Pleasanton, recalling visits 35 years ago from his late maternal grandfather, Jesus Valdez, who was born in Mazatlan.

Now my father, Al Amador Jr., buys puerquitos at a little panader(acu)a in Concord for my kids, 6-year-old Michael and 3-year-old Sophia. They look forward to them, just like my brother, sister and I used to years ago.

Also popular with the small fry are polvorones, round cookies named for the Spanish word for dust or powder. The basic recipe is a simple mixture of flour, shortening, sugar, egg and leavening, but there are endless variations, including mini-chocolate chips in the dough or ice cream-style sprinkles on top.

Variable styles

Every panader(acu)a will have a slightly different selection from the next.

San Joses El Rico Pan, where Mora once worked while honing his baking skills, offers the humorously titled borrachos (borr-AH-chohs). Thats a word rarely used in high society roughly translating to falling-down drunks, an appropriate enough title for this (non-alcoholic) rum-flavored concoction of bread dough deliciously flavored with cinnamon and raisins, drenched in caramel syrup.

El Rico Pan co-owner Antonio Fernandez lived until age 7 in the little village of Tangancuaro in Michoacan, a village too small to have its own panader(acu)a. Residents depended for their pastry fix on a man who owned a truck and regularly drove in with cuernos, conchas and polvorones from a nearby town.

To be sure, the pan dulce to be found in the Bay Area are different than those with which Fernandez grew up. Some changes come about because ingredients may be unavailable or different here, but there are other reasons as well. As succeeding generations become further removed from the motherland, palates change, local bakers adapt to those changing tastes, and eventually the end product takes on its own personality.

San Diego-based Billy Cross, a Sacramento native who leads culinary tours throughout Mexico, explains, You could call pan dulce baking in the U.S. `the culture and cooking of displacements. Immigrant communities bring certain things together that float between their homeland and their adopted country, picking what is good and what they like from both cultures.

Food is a growing, evolving thing, he adds. There is no good or bad to it.

What Cross does lament is a growing trend both here and in Latin America away from expensive ingredients such as butter and pure, fresh lard - both commonly used in pan dulce baking until 40 or 50 years ago - in favor of super-whipped shortening.

Panader(acu)as making pan dulce the old-fashioned way are few and far between, but Cross has identified a handful. The more expensive places with more expensive ingredients exist in beautiful little pastry shops in Mexico City and Guadalajara. And in Oaxaca, theres a chain called Rome Pasteleria, run by chemists who left Mexico City 20 years ago to start their own pastry shop. Their pan dulce is the best Ive ever found in Mexico.

Though Rome Pasteleria might be a good excuse to plan a trip to Oaxaca, you dont need to travel thousands of miles to gain at least a basic understanding of pan dulce. The first step toward starting your education is no further than your closest panader(acu)a.

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