Whole Wheat Wild Rice Bread

Six years of this journal. Three hundred and twelve weeks. Two thousand one hundred and eighty-four days. I am forty-eight, almost forty-nine. The bakery — the El Paso bakery — is ten years old. The Anapra bakery is three weeks old. The recipe notebook has one hundred and seventy entries. My five children are: Luis Jr. (twenty-four, married, father, soldier), Isabella (twenty-two, NICU nurse, saving babies), Sofia (eighteen, full partner, running the business), Diego (sixteen, engineer, designed the Anapra bakery, Professor Waffles still on the bed), and Camila (almost thirteen, mezzo-soprano, songwriter, Children's Chorus, owner of a dog named Concha). I have one grandchild: Alejandro, nine months old, named for my father, with his father's face and his great-grandmother's stubbornness.

What has changed in six years: the bakery went from eight tables to twelve tables plus four tables across the border. The revenue went from post-pandemic recovery to over a hundred thousand dollars. The Juárez fund went from zero to thirty thousand and back to zero because it was spent on what it was saved for. The dream went from a grape at midnight to a building with a sign. The children went from high school to careers. The grandson arrived. The dog arrived. The second bakery arrived. Everything arrived.

What hasn't changed: the conchas. The 4 AM. The flour. The hands. The recipe. The promise. Rosa's name on two doors now. The candles at St. Patrick's. The caldo on Sunday. The bridge in my heart. The bridge that now has a bakery on each end.

I made conchas this morning. In El Paso. Two hundred. The same as always. And in Anapra, Lupita made conchas. Two hundred. The same recipe. The same dough. The same shell pattern. Four hundred conchas, two cities, one recipe, one promise, one woman who started it all in a kitchen with no hot water and whose name is on two buildings and whose recipes feed two neighborhoods and whose daughter stands in one kitchen and whose protégée stands in the other and the standing is the legacy and the legacy is the bread and the bread is the bridge and the bridge connects everything, always, across the river, across the years, across the grief, across the joy, across the everything.

Still here. On both sides now. Still here.

I am not sharing the concha recipe today — that one belongs to Rosa, and it lives in the notebook, and it will stay there a little longer. But this morning, after I finished the four hundred conchas across two kitchens in two cities, I came home and I baked bread the way I do when I need to feel the weight of something good in my hands. This whole wheat wild rice bread has that weight — the chew of the grain, the earthiness of the rice, the smell that fills a kitchen and makes it feel like a place people come back to. Sofia was at the El Paso bakery. Lupita was in Anapra. And I was here, making bread, because that is what this family does when everything arrives at once and we need to stay grounded in the flour.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + 2 hours rising | Cook Time: 35 minutes | Total Time: 2 hours 55 minutes | Servings: 12 slices

Ingredients

1 cup cooked wild rice, cooled to room temperature
1 1/4 cups warm water (105–115°F)
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 standard packet)
2 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for the bowl
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for kneading
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted (for brushing)

Instructions

Activate the yeast. Combine warm water, honey, and yeast in a large bowl. Stir gently and let sit for 5–10 minutes until foamy. If the yeast does not foam, discard and start again with fresh yeast.
Mix the dough. Add the olive oil and cooked wild rice to the yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add the whole wheat flour and salt, stirring until a shaggy dough forms. Gradually add the all-purpose flour, 1/4 cup at a time, mixing until the dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl.
Knead. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8–10 minutes, until smooth and elastic. The dough will be slightly tacky from the rice — resist adding too much extra flour. Shape into a ball.
First rise. Lightly oil a large clean bowl, place the dough inside, and turn to coat. Cover with a clean kitchen towel or plastic wrap and let rise in a warm spot for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until doubled in size.
Shape the loaf. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured surface. Shape into a tight oval loaf and place seam-side down in a greased 9x5-inch loaf pan.
Second rise. Cover loosely and let rise for 30–45 minutes, until the dough crowns about 1 inch above the rim of the pan.
Bake. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bake the loaf for 30–35 minutes, until deep golden brown and hollow-sounding when tapped on the bottom. An instant-read thermometer inserted in the center should read 190–200°F.
Finish and cool. Remove from the pan immediately and brush the top with melted butter. Transfer to a wire rack and cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing. The crumb will set as it cools — do not skip this step.

Nutrition (per serving)

Whole Wheat Wild Rice Bread — The Bread That Holds Two Bakeries Together