Pandesal

Type of Philippine bread

Pandesal, also known as Pan de sal (lang es, lit. "salt bread") is a staple bread roll in the Philippines commonly eaten for breakfast. It is made of flour, yeast, sugar, oil, and salt.

Pandesal is a popular yeast raised bread in the Philippines. Individual loaves are shaped by rolling the dough into long logs (bastón, Spanish for "stick") which are rolled in fine bread crumbs. These are then portioned, allowed to rise, and baked. It is most commonly served hot and may be eaten as is, or dipped in coffee, tsokolate (hot chocolate), or milk. It can also be complemented with butter, margarine, cheese, jam, peanut butter, chocolate spread, or other fillings like eggs, sardines and meat. Its taste and texture closely resemble those of the Puerto Rican pan de agua, French croissant, and Mexican bolillos. Contrary to its name, pandesal tastes slightly sweet rather than salty. Most bakeries produce pandesal in the morning for breakfast consumption, though some bake pandesal the whole day.

Some pandesal in supermarkets and some bakeries are less crusty and lighter in color. These also tend to have more sugar than the traditional pandesal, which only has 1.75% sugar. On Siargao Island, famous as a surfing spot, an oval shaped version is locally known as "pan de surf" as it resembles a surfboard. It is baked on makeshift ovens fueled with coconut husks, and usually sold alongside pan de coco. Dried and ground up malunggay or moringa leaves are sometimes mixed into the flour for added nutritional content; this is called "malunggay pandesal" or "malunggay bread". Other contemporary variants include chocolate, matcha, strawberry and blueberry flavors.

The precursor of the pandesal was pan de suelo ("floor bread"), a local Spanish Filipino version of the French baguette baked directly on the floor of a wood fired oven called a pugón. It was made with wheat flour and was harder and crustier than the pandesal. Since wheat is not natively produced in the Philippines, bakers eventually switched to more affordable yet inferior flour, resulting in the softer, doughy texture of the pandesal. Pandesal flourished in the American colonial era in the early 1900s, when cheaper American wheat became readily available. It has since become a staple breakfast bread in the Philippines. Baking of pandesal in pugón has declined due to a nationwide ban on cutting mangrove trees for fuel, and bakers shifted to using gas fired ovens.