Hiking Oaxaca – El Carrizal 2
El Carrizal, located high in the Sierras about 2 1/2 hours from the city of Oaxaca, is one of our favorite hiking/weekend excursion destinations. Some of the local delights from the trip last year can be viewed here.
View of the village of El Carrizal from a trail side mirador (lookout).
A highlight of this visit was learning about three bakeries that produce flat, round and quite tasty loaves, which we savored at every meal! The bread is totally local – growing the trigo (wheat), separating the grain, grinding into flour, mixing, and finally baking.
Click on any photo for a slide show.
Photo by Lorna Stone.
The bakery below is owned by two families who bake bread twice a week.
The kneading of bread was in this enormous trough made from one tree, smoothed with years of work.
Photo and caption by Lorna Stone. Thanks, Lorna!
Tasting and learning!
Corn is another product totally grown and processed locally. Kernals are dried, ground, and made into delicious tortillas, and the husks and stalks are fed to animals. Maybe the husks are even used for tamales! As we were walking along the dirt road toward the mirador, these people waved us over to chat. The corn is typically put on the flat rooftops to dry then removed from the cobs and stored for grinding into the meal or flour for tortillas.
The people of El Carrizal are exceptionally friendly and welcoming. Everyone agreed that these people are what made such a magical weekend! We’ll definitely be back next year.
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Must have been a wonderful experience to see!
It was, and you know that it is always the best when there is communication among everyone!
An interesting process – and the bread looks yummy!! Thanks again Marilyn…
Thanks for the comment – the bread is quite yummy! They make great hot chocolate here, just with the ground cocoa beans, sugar, and cinnamon and/or almonds. The treat is to dip the bread in the hot chocolate!
Lovely post. Thank You reporting with interesting photos.
I’m glad you liked it!
We call wheat flour terigu here in Indonesia — it is obvious that the Portuguese were the ones who introduced it to the peoples in the archipelago — and it is called trigo both in Portuguese and Spanish. Watching local people processing their food is always fascinating. It must have smelled really good in that bakery!
It did smell wonderful and tasted even better! We all bought at least two loaves.