Birotes Salados (Mexican Sourdough Bread) (2024)

Birotes are a popular sourdough bread from Guadalajara, Mexico with a history tracing back to the Second French Intervention in Mexico in 1864. The salado (salty) version is used for savory applications like the famous Torta Ahogada (drowned sandwich) which is filled with pork, refried beans, and pickled onions; and then drenched in salsa.

The bread isn’t particularly salty, but the term salado distinguishes it from sweet or yeast-leavened versions. I did read on a Guadalajara tourism blog that some bakers brush the dough or the just-baked breads with saltwater to ensure an extra crunchy crust, but I couldn’t find this in any recipes I looked over. Nonetheless, the key characteristic of birotes salados is their crustiness, which allows them to hold up well to being saturated in sauce.

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Looking at birotes, you might think they’re just sourdough demi baguettes with a different name, but traditional birotes have beer, lime juice, and egg in them because of a unique starter build. I learned about the birote sourdough starter in a video of Karl De Smedt, the manager of the world heritage sourdough library in Belgium. In the video, De Smedt tours the Guadalajara bakery of Fernando del Río, who shows his process of feeding the birote sourdough starter beer, egg, lime juice, sugar, salt, and flour.

While I suspected it would take many feedings to make my starter have a similar microbial profile to that of del Río’s forty-year-old birote starter, I still wanted to experiment with this — see how the starter and the dough developed, and how the bread tasted. I looked online for standard ratios of birote starter ingredients, but couldn’t find them, not even among recipe blogs in Spanish, so I created my own build influenced by the lime and beer ratios in the birote dough of Bryan Ford in New World Sourdough.

Ingredients that go in a traditional Mexican birote starter.

The delicious birotes in the photo above were made with Ford’s recipe, the only modification being that I used whole grain yecora rojo flour for half of the flour. Ford’s recipe uses a flour-and-water sourdough starter, and his final birote dough has 8.3% beer and 2.3% lime juice, no egg. My final birote recipe below has 5.3% beer, 2.1% lime juice, and 7.5% egg; and these ingredients go into the starter build. The resulting birotes have a comparatively soft and spongy crumb, likely because of the egg, but the crust is still quite crunchy.

Birote sourdough starter build

I was sure my starter would take a while to get lively with this complicated feed, because protein, fat, alcohol, sugar, and salt all are known to impede the growth of sourdough microbes, but this wasn’t the case. The starter doubled in about three hours. Quite possibly, the starter was actually boosted by the yeast in the beer that I used (homebrewed) and by the pH lowering lime juice, but my off-the-cuff theory about why egg is traditionally in the starter is that maybe it helps slow the starter’s development in a warm climate.

2.5 hours after mixing, kept warm in a lit oven

I used yecora rojo wheat flour for half the flour in my birotes because I wanted some flavor and fiber of whole wheat, and because I thought it would be neat to use a wheat variety with origins in Mexico. Yecora rojo was developed by the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture and the International Maize & Wheat Improvement Center around 1970. It’s a robust flavored wheat with relatively strong gluten.

All the ingredients mixed together at once for an easy process

The whole grain flour and the very large amount of sourdough starter in my recipe, almost 50%, make the process fast. I chose not to retard (refrigerate) the dough at any point, but you can if you want to, most conveniently at the end of the bulk fermentation.

Speedy 3-hour bulk fermentation; pre-shaping and final shaping combined into one step

The birotes then proofed for about an hour, during which I began the pre-heat of my oven and stone. I used my usual method for steam: putting a boiling cup of water in an aluminum pan that has a pinhole in it.

Ingredients

Starter Build (311g)

100 grams sourdough starter (1/2 cup)
100 grams organic all purpose flour (3/4 cup)
1 egg
36 grams beer (3 Tbsp)
14 grams lime juice (1 Tbsp)
10g sugar (2 tsp)
~1 g salt (1/8 tsp)

Final Dough (1187g)

260 grams bread flour (2 cups)
260 grams whole grain yecora rojo flour (2 cups)
345 grams water (1 1/2 cups)
All of the ripe sourdough starter from above (about 311g)
11 grams salt (2 tsp)

Instructions

Starter Build

Mix the ingredients for the birote sourdough starter 3-4 hours before you plan to mix your dough. If you need a longer build time, use less starter and replace with more flour and water (e.g. 40 grams sourdough starter, 30 grams water and 30 grams additional flour).
Cover and let the starter ripen somewhere warm until it is at least doubled in size.

Final Dough Mixing

Combine all the dough ingredients in a large bowl, including the ripe sourdough starter, and mix until everything is well incorporated, then cover.
Over the next hour, do three sets of stretching and folding of the dough with 20-minute rests in between. After just the first round, the dough should feel cohesive with almost nothing coming off on your hands. If it's somehow very wet still and not holding together, add a 30g (1/4 cup) more flour.
When the dough has almost doubled in size, scrape it out onto a well floured work surface.

Shaping

Divide the dough into five (237g) or six (197g) pieces, and roll each piece into a ball.
Let the dough briefly rest while you flour your linen couche or tea towel where the dough will proof.
Flip over a dough ball and pinch it into an oval, then roll it into a tapered tube. If it still feels loose, stitch the tube tighter and then re-roll it. You can see a short video of this below.
Place the shaped dough seam-side up on the couch and fold the linen a bit to give the dough side support. Repeat with all the dough pieces and then cover with the couche or another tea towel.

Final Proof and Baking

Let the dough proof for about one hour while you prep your oven.
Put a stone, steel, or baking sheet on your oven's middle shelf. If you have a large roasting pan, plan to use it over your dough and stone for steam. If not, put an aluminum pan with a pinhole poked into it on the oven shelf under the stone. This creates a drip system for steam. When making the pinhole, test over your sink that water drips through it about 1-2 drops a second.
Preheat your oven set-up to 500°F for 30 minutes.
Place a sheet of parchment paper on an upside down or rimless baking sheet.
When oven preheat and final proof are complete, boil a cup of water in the microwave if you're doing the drip pan.
Flip the birotes onto the parchment paper and score them down the center and at a slight ~60° angle (as opposed to 90°).
Slide the parchment sheet onto your hot stone. Immediately pour the cup of boiling water onto the aluminum pan below or place the inverted roasting pan over your dough, and close the oven door to trap the steam.
Bake for 10 minutes at 500°F (with the roasting pan over the dough if using).
Turn the oven temperature down to 475°F (remove the roasting pan) and bake another 10 minutes. Rotate the baguettes if needed to get even browning.
Turn off the oven and prop open the door with a wooden spoon for an additional 10 minutes.
The birotes can be left out for 1-2 days, after which it's best to wrap them to keep them from hardening and toast them before eating to re-crisp the crust. You can also wrap and then bag them to freeze as soon as they've cooled completely. Defrosting info can be found here.