MARKETS : Send In the Clowns, the Clams, the Mustaches

El Gallo, 4546 Brooklyn Ave., East Los Angeles, (213) 263-5528 or (800) 65-Gallo. Open 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, including holidays.

The sound of dough mixers that has echoed off the lofty ceiling of El Gallo’s workroom since 5 a.m. is finally quiet. Now, at 10 a.m., there are only rhythmic thumps and clacking rolls as head bakery man Nicholas Sosa and his crew hand-shape the nearly 4,500 pieces of pan dulce that the bakery will sell that day. Working at a long, high table, the bakers produce the whole gamut of traditional Mexican sweet breads. Some have cartoon-like forms and nicknames: Conchas (clam shells), payasos (clowns), cuernos (horns), bigotes (mustaches) and tomates (tomatoes) are among more than 50 varieties they turn out daily.

Early in the day, when the bakers have loaded tray after tray of pan dulce onto the sparkling, mirror-lined shelves behind the bakery counters, the whole place smells of freshly brewed coffee and mingling aromas of yeast and cinnamon. Children, who clatter into the bakery wide-eyed behind the grownups, are offered special tastes from a tray piled high with samples. Their parents--many come in twice a day--can indulge in El Gallo’s wonderfully rich Gavina coffee while they make their selection from the orderly rows of pan dulce.

The neighborhood, one of the oldest settlements in Los Angeles, has all the conveniences of a small, traditional Mexican town. El Gallo’s block boasts two places that still sell hand-made tortillas, a shop that makes wonderful carnitas and a small factory that turns out delicious Mexican-style glazed pumpkin and sweet potato candies. And kids can walk up the street to a shady park and an elementary school.

Pan dulce is most familiar on the breakfast table, where the story-book shapes and wide variety delight children and adults who devour it with steaming cups of coffee or hot chocolate. People also eat pan dulce for supper when their main meal--from 2 to 4 p.m.--precludes having anything too heavy in the evening. Unfortunately, sub-standard pan dulce has marred its reputation. But El Gallo’s subtly sweet breads, flavored with crushed cinnamon and generous quantities of fresh eggs, are likely to change many opinions.

What has kept El Gallo’s customers coming for three or four generations? The exceptional quality of its goods, of course. But also the fact that it bakes many difficult-to-find items that require special time-consuming techniques.

Each pan dulce is a complex little work of art. To make tortugas (turtles), for instance, a baker must roll out an oval of cinnamon dough, then roll a ‘ pasta ‘ made from sugar and shortening on top of that. Next he stamps on a turtle-shell design before draping the dough over the turtle’s oval body, made from pan de huevo , an egg dough. To create elotes , the cinnamon-dough buns that resemble ears of corn, El Gallo’s bakers, who have all honed their skills in Mexican panaderias , must etch in the rows of kernels with deft knife strokes.

The elotes will be stuffed with the same pasta used for the turtle shells. Several of the same basic doughs, toppings or fillings show up in many panes dulces combined in their own novel way. “Each bread has its own taste and character because the components can be varied almost endlessly,” says El Gallo’s owner, Jesus Huerta.

El Gallo was opened in 1949 by Huerta’s mother, Magdalena Martinez-Huerta, and her brother Lauro. Their father had owned bakeries in Mexico since the early 1920s. He was also an entrepreneur, with a string of ice cream shops and cantinas in Guadalajara.

Martinez-Huerta would eventually follow in her father’s entrepreneurial footsteps. But for her first American business, she faced the challenge of creating authentic-tasting products using American ingredients. There was much to be changed: “The flour is different, so is the water. Even the different weather can change everything; yeast dough is very temperamental,” Huerta explains.

Working in a much smaller shop--the first El Gallo was up the street where a Long Beach Freeway overpass stands now--Martinez developed her recipes. Most call for expensive high-gluten flour because, says Huerta, it tastes better and makes a dough with better texture.

After a few years, Martinez-Huerta had built her business into a popular bakery. But she wanted to return to Mexico after she married and had children, preferring the lifestyle in Mexico. To keep her thriving bakery in the family, she consigned El Gallo to a cousin who had worked with her in the business.

Huerta was 6 when they moved, but he learned the business well by hanging around the bakery whenever the family was in town on its many business trips. “You kind of grow up with the experience in your pores,” he says.

In the nine years he has run El Gallo, Huerta has brought the bakery into the ‘90s with resurfaced, stainless-steel walls; new rotating, 48-pan ovens; a huge walk-in refrigerator and other modern equipment. Employees are cheerfully decked out in aprons, T-shirts and hats emblazoned with an El Gallo logo.

The shop’s panes dulces are as painstakingly crafted as if they’d been made in a traditional Mexican shop. But customers can now dial a somewhat untraditional (800) 65-GALLO to place large orders.

SHOPPING LIST

Panes dulces and other wheat breads arrived in the New World after the Spanish planted sugar cane and wheat on their first trip. The nuns and bakers who prepared Spanish-inspired sweets in the New World practically ignored the wonderful local vanilla and chocolate. They relied instead on cinnamon and cloves inherited from their Spanish kitchens. Little has changed in Mexican baking since then.

It’s easy to remember what each pan dulce is like when you think of them in categories.

TWO-DOUGH PAN DULCE

All these breads, with the exception of nuez , start with a portion of pan de huevo , which is then individually shaped for each particular bread. Next, a covering of a different dough goes over this, and for each bread it is handled differently. The shell of the tortugas , for example, is cinnamon dough topped with pasta amarilla made yellow with the addition of egg yolks that bakes to a crackly finish. Even after the final sprinkling of sugar, tortugas aren’t as sweet-tasting as they look.

* Zapotes: Some say zapotes , slightly flat round buns with a thick strip of pasta right in the center of their cinnamon dough covering, resemble sapotes, the sub-tropical fruit. The pasta stripe reminds others of a mustache; so they call this bread a bigote.

* Negritos, or little black ones, are the least sweet of all the breads in this group. The only embellishment on the cinnamon dough that covers their round shape is diagonal rows of ridges.

* Novias, my favorite pan dulce , means sweethearts or fiancees. The round bun of cloud-light egg bread is topped with a sugar-dusted spiral of pano de novia , a strudel-like dough that unwinds if you pull one end. I love to settle in and nibble one along with a good, strong cup of tea.

* Nuez de cocoa and nuez de azucar are amusing “nuts” in the form of a sweet bread. A rich, raisin-studded biscuit-like egg dough is baked inside a sculpted cinnamon dough covering. The covering’s etched design resembles a nutshell pattern. A nuez de azucar is decorated with a mist of sugar while a nuez de cocoa is sprinkled with coconut.

DECORATED PAN DE HUEVOS

* Light Pan de Huevos: The egg dough used in the more complex breads above is the base for conchas , tomates , chilindrinas and calabazas de crema. Conchas have their pasta topping stamped with a shell design. You can get them in three versions: conchas amarillas with egg yolk mixed into the pasta , conchas de chocolate (flavored with cocoa) or plain white conchas blancas. The pasta topping on round tomates is spritzed with a tiny dusting of red sugar, while the topping for chilindrinas is dipped in large white sugar crystals.

The most voluptuous of these, calabaza de crema , is supposed to resemble a pumpkin. It’s a simple pan de huevo round with a wedge removed, then filled with a velvety egg custard.

* Cuernos de Mantequilla: To make the shop’s most popular pan dulce , the bakers cut richer egg dough (with a lower proportion of flour to other ingredients, which makes it more dense) into triangles, spread it with margarine and roll the dough into “butterhorns,” as they are known in English.

* Picones: Even eggier than the cuernos , picones are Mexico’s answer to brioche; everyone loves their velvety crumb. Picones come in three sizes, decorated with pasta flowers or plain round shapes.

* Holiday Breads: When Mexico’s two most famous breads are made at El Gallo for the holidays, they attract lines that snake out the door. Rosca de los Reyes , or Ring of the Kings, a traditional bread from Spain, is served on Epiphany, Jan. 6, to commemorate the search of the three kings for the baby Jesus. The bread is decorated with crystallized fruit “jewels,” animals, trees and flowers. Hidden inside the bread, a tiny doll represents the child. Whoever finds it must throw a party on Candlemas Day, the special day of godparents, Feb. 2.

On the Day of the Dead (Nov. 1) and on All Soul’s Day (Nov. 2), people visit their family’s graves. This is when everyone buys pan de muertos , bread of the dead. It comes in two styles: one decorated as a skeleton, another as a round bread decorated with dough in the shape of bones. A little ghoulish, perhaps, but delicious nonetheless.

CINNAMON-DOUGH PAN DULCE (MASA PARA FINO)

Crushed--not ground--cinnamon gives these little breads their marvelous aroma. The dough is the same one used as a covering for the double-dough breads such as negritos , zapotes and nuez. Made without eggs, the dough is heavier than pan de huevo.

* Elotes, the corn ear-shaped breads, hold a surprise-package: sweet filling.

* Cuernitos are triangles of the dough topped with pasta and rolled into little horn shapes.

* Payasos, or clowns, tempt children with their pink sugar glaze.

* Chamucos look like little pies or sunny-side-up eggs with a huge yolk. They are a thin circle of the cinnamon dough surrounding a disk of pasta amarilla.

* Empanadas, the richest panes dulces of this group, come stuffed with a sweet pumpkin filling (empanadas de calabaza) or filled with jelly (empanadas de jalea).

PUFF PASTRY STYLES

Because they require special skills and are time-consuming to produce, most of these panes dulces are difficult to find now, even in Mexico. Mexican bakers, who get paid by the piece, want to stick with more quickly made pan dulce.

Each of the following pastries has a flaky quality, yet is distinct. The ingredients vary slightly, and every dough is handled differently.

* Libros: As if by magic, a soft, sticky dough of flour, water and purified lard rises high into brittle, multi-layered pastries. The proper layering of the dough with flour and lard is the secret. Caramelized sugar glazing the top is a contrast to the pastry’s bland base. Some bakers call these libros or books (presumably the flakes resemble pages). Others have named them almohadas , pillows. Another version, made by twisting thin rectangles of the dough at the center to look like bows, is called monos.

* Campechanas: The flaky texture of campechanas is softer and more tender than the brittle libros. It takes real persistence to get the knack of rolling out this pastry, according to Diana Kennedy, author and Mexican food authority. She says if they’re not baked exactly right, you’ll find raw dough at their centers. For a start, campechana dough must be mixed until it’s very elastic. Then the rolling and stretching must be done without tearing holes in the dough. Finally, each campechana must be pinched off the dough roll--never cut.

A glass-like glaze of caramelized sugar (some bakeries call campechanas mirrors) tops the pastries. Baking the glaze is another tricky technique.

* Acampechanadas: Mexico’s answer to fruit-filled strudel has a layered dough, stretched in the pan and covered with apple or pineapple filling. Another stretched dough sheet creates the flaky top crust. Acampechanada’s bar-shaped slices must be cut before they are baked or they would “break in a million pieces,” says Huerta.

* Hojaldrados: Not as flaky as the aforementioned pastries, hojaldrados are slightly sweet and denser than libros or campechanas. Their dough, which is spread with shortening, is stretched and rolled by two bakers from opposite ends. The resulting pano , or tea towel-like dough, is made into two products: One portion is sliced thin for the tops of novias . The other portion is shaped into individual buns.

* Orejas and Cuernitas de Crema: Any Francophile will recognize that orejas (ears) are palmiers. Their thin, flaky pastry is layered with large-crystal sugar, which melts and forms a glaze between the dough layers. Some may be disappointed that vegetable shortening and not butter is used here. A tastier use of the dough, in my opinion, is for cuernitas de crema , little pastry cones that are baked, then filled with eggy custard.

MISCELLANEOUS

* Guayabas: Named after the guava fruit, these round, eggy biscuits have raisins for “seeds.” A quick bread, almost like a scone, guayaba dough is one of the few flavored with vanilla. This dough is also the base for nuez , discussed above.

* Semitas: It’s the dark sugar and crushed cinnamon that give these only slightly sweet yeast buns their aroma. A little wheat bran is sprinkled into the dough and over the top of the buns. These are known as semitas de polvo (dust). El Gallo makes semitas sin polvo , too. The bran topping is replaced by a shiny egg wash.

* Marranos or Puerquitos: These plump, piggy-shaped sweet breads look like overgrown gingerbread cookies. With their dark sugar and ginger flavoring, they even resemble gingerbread.

* Rosca de Canela: Surprisingly, these coffee cake-like rings are made of pulverized dinner rolls that have been infused with cinnamon and sugar, then formed into wreaths and baked.

* Empanadas: Not every empanada has the same crust. Pumpkin and jelly fillings go with the cinnamon dough mentioned above. But pineapple and apple-filled empanadas have a richer egg dough made without yeast. With their wide-rimmed, fluted edges, empanadas de crema are the fanciest. These hold a custard filling inside a firm, sugar-topped cinnamon dough made without yeast.