LONG BEACH, California – The pleasure of a well-made kouign-amann – a French pastry from the town of Douarnenez, perfected in bakeries across Brittany – is in that tingle of salty butter layered through the laminated roll, set against the sweetness of the yeast dough and the dark caramel that covers it.
At Gusto Bread, in Long Beach, the flavor is enhanced by sourdough and a dose of nixtamalized corn. The combination is enough to completely recalibrate the taste and texture, to take the fidelity of the pastry away from France and to reposition it as a Mexican sweet bread, a pan dulce. This calls for a new name, doesn’t it?
The Nixtamal Queen is delicious, both as a pastry that leaves your fingers satisfied and sticky, and as a challenge to the idea of Eurocentric authority in the bread and pastry world.
Arturo Enciso and Ana Belén Salatino run that rare kind of bakery, uninhibited by convention or nostalgia, but with respect for Mexican and indigenous traditions. Their xocolatl highlights the deliciousness of the cocoa bean in its most basic and ancient form, the dark chocolate crushed and whisked in hot water until it dissolves almost completely leaving only a faint grain.
The drink isn’t creamy, exactly, but it’s full-bodied and head-filling—a chocolate bar that will knock you back. Warm and undiluted, the flavors open from floral to fruity to spicy over the course of a single sip.
Gusto Bread, which opened in Long Beach in 2020, is part of a constellation of panaderías, including Panadería Rosetta in Mexico City and Barrio Bread in Tucson, Arizona, which have reclaimed the principles of artisanal baking—traditional fermentation methods, heirloom grains, and local , seasonal ingredients – away from European traditions, which never had exclusive rights in the first place.
As with that Nixtamal queen, Mr. Enciso bakes all of his naturally leavened breads and pastries not with yeast, but with a pancake batter-like sourdough starter fed with bread flour – his masa madre – and works with a wide variety of grains, many of them grown in Mexico or California: wheat, corn, amaranth, rye, spelt, buckwheat, and rice.
Raised in California by parents from Mexico, Mr. Enciso learned to bake relatively recently, in 2013, using a book by baker Richard Miscovich and a wood-burning oven in his backyard.
As his hobby got more serious, Mr. Enciso and Mrs. Salatino moved to a new house a few blocks away in 2017, where they started a cottage bakery from their living room and found an eager audience nearby.
Holiday bread and daily specials have also made Gusto a destination. Until the end of October and leading up to Día de los Muertos, the bakery sells sourdough pan de muerto, drizzled with syrup when it comes out of the oven and rolled in cinnamon sugar.
And last Epiphany Day Gusto sold miniature Roscas de Reyes – rosquitas! — the sweet dough filled with guava, cranberries and almonds.
While I’m not entirely convinced by the whole-wheat cookies made with buckwheat and spelled, the delicate walnut polvorón and whole-wheat concha, coated in cocoa butter, are a delight.
Gusto’s pudgy pan de maiz, roughly textured with kitchen-ground corn, and sweet with honey, is wonderfully simple. I also like to break it into bowls of beans and veggies drizzled with chili oil, a few crumbs in the stock, where they stay firm and soak, making the foods I eat even better.
The California bread I recently brought home from Gusto had a dark, thin crust and a nice open crumb, but with an even, healthy texture (not so gaping with holes that it was impossible to spread with butter). Baked with locally grown Yecora Rojo, a hard red spring wheat, this bread kept me company for a whole week, both guiding and informing my meals.
At first I enjoyed its chewy and malty smooth taste, plain, with butter and salt, next to a pile of salad. As it got old, I toasted pieces under the broiler and dipped them in runny egg yolk. I topped some with sautéed garlic greens, walnuts and a spoonful of Gusto’s addictive salsa negra – warm and fruity with morita chiles and sweet with candied garlic.
Recently I tore and fry the last of them in olive oil, then built a kind of panzanella with pomelos, soft herbs and smoked trout from a can. At every stage, in every state, the bread had something to offer.
I’m telling you all this because it’s not enough to say the bread was good. Because unlike a restaurant, a really great bakery will fold into your life in a very intimate way, if you let it. Because you don’t just go to a bakery, you also bring it home.
Gusto Bread, 2710 East Fourth Street, Long Beach, California; 562-343-1881; gustobread.com