Flores Family: three generations of bakers

Being a baker is one of the oldest trades in human history, as it relates to wheat, one of the base grains for human feeding.

For more than four decades, the Flores family has carried out this job in the Don Raúl bakery, located in the city of Puebla.

This exhibition is a recognition to all the workers who knead the ingredients and, with the help of the oven, make a wide variety of breads in this family business which, with love and dedication, care for future generations, because children play a key role.

For centuries, the role of baker has been learned from childhood. Children help in the simplest tasks, then playfully get closer to the ingredients, familiarize themselves with them, their textures, their consistency and their temperatures. Little by little they are experimenting with being able to stir them to obtain the masa dough.

No learning is as effective as through play: feeling the masa dough as if it were plasticine to shape into bread.

The elders are lovingly guiding this path that never ends once it has begun. Contact with the masa dough and making the different types of bread becomes natural, as if it were part of a game.

As a small alchemist, the child-baker will continue to learn over the years, from assistant to officer, to become a skillful master baker, who with his patient work continues to forge the prestige of Puebla's gastronomy. 

Experimenting with the masa dough, Carlos Daniel learns to shape these small threads of kings, one of the most popular seasonal breads in all of Mexico.

Third generation in the family business: Santiago, only two years old, learns to knead the masa dough playfully, while Carlos Daniel accompanies him in this test of skill.

Making pastry, the bread par excellence for the feast of the dead. This is a pretext for a baker to learn the art of kneading from a young child.

Bread with sesame and cheese is one of many that can be found in the Don Raúl bakery. It is made with oil and is filled with cheese to offer a different flavor.

Playing at being a baker, Santiago also experiments in the creation of small pastries for the day of the dead season.

Among the breads they learn to make is ombligo (belly button) or bísquet (biscuit), sweet and salty bread that has found a good welcome among consumers.

Reja, a classic of the Puebla bakery, has been made for decades in the Don Raúl bakery, and the elders remember it as a favorite.