A recipe of success
Thursday, December 28, 2006 2:18 PM PST
Johna Strickland
Argus Observer
Nyssa
Marco Rodriguez is part chemist, part meteorologist and all baker.
His days begin at 3 a.m. with whirring mixers, a weather check and a head count at Rodriguez Bakery in Nyssa.
Humidity.
Temperature.
Precipitation.
Each affects how fast the yeast reacts. The faster the reaction, the faster the pastries must be formed.
“Weather determines how we mix our dough every day,” Marco Rodriguez, 41, Nyssa, said.
The people factor ordains the amount of sugar Rodriguez uses in each recipe. More bakers shaping pastries means less sugar. Sugar slows the yeast reaction giving two bakers more time to shape the 1,800 conchas — a round type of Mexican bread — before they must be baked, Rodriguez said.
Daily ingredient proportions are massive: 15 to 30 dozen eggs, 600 pounds of flour, 175 pounds of sugar, 100 pounds of shortening to make 4,000 pieces of Mexican bread, Becky Rodriguez, Marco’s wife and business partner, said.
A machine stirs the dough. Humans weigh it into 21/2 pound increments. A machine cuts the increments into 20 2-ounce pieces.
Then it’s back to the humans, where hands become blurs as dough blobs take shape.
“Our hands move like Mexicans’ (hands) when they talk,” Marco Rodriguez said.
For conchas, each 2-ounce piece is pounded flat by hands clothed in flour. Then a ball of sugary dough colored yellow, pink or brown is patted onto the sticky disk of concha dough. The swooping ridges of a shell are stamped into the soft dough.
Empanadas — a turnover style pastry — get the same pounding treatment before pumpkin or berries are spooned into the center. Rodriguez uses thermodynamics here: if the filling is too warm, the dough may start rising prematurely.
Azucarados are traditionally shaped like croissants.
But Marco Rodriguez is a revolutionary. He makes “hot dog bread,” he says.
The pink or yellow sugar dough is wrapped in a bun of golden brown dough and left straight, like a hot dog bun.
Working from the recipes of his father — Francisco Rodriguez, the first owner of Rodriguez Bakery — Rodriguez and his employees, Luis Alberto-Lopez and Francisco Ramirez, make alterations to increase the shelf life of the baked goods.
“When my dad made the bread, he would make it just to the evening,” Marco Rodriguez said. “We’ve gone through trial and error to make it last longer. We don’t use any preservatives. It’s all natural. I wanna keep it the way my dad did. As long as I can keep that printing on my package that says no preservatives ... I feel good about it.”
Dry products, like conchas and azucarados, are good for three weeks, Becky Rodriguez said. Empanadas, however, last just eight days. The bread is sold wholesale to Associated Foods, the Ontario school district, Albertson’s, Red Apple and other commercial markets.
As with most family recipes, there are special ingredients in the recipes of Francisco Rodriguez: passion and hard work.
“It’s not like you walk in and turn on the lights and make money. If you don’t turn on these machines (mixers), you don’t make no money,” Marco Rodriguez said. “Nothing can beat putting your nose to the grindstone. There’s no recipe for that.”
