Fallen baking hero Richard Hart’s passionfruit chocolate bar, found at his Hart Bageri in Frederiksberg, Copenhagen’s “city within a city,” looks better than it tastes.
It’s dense, cloyingly sweet, and somehow tastes one-note, despite featuring one of the tartest and brightest tasting fruits on the planet. The bakery also exemplifies peak European privilege: luxe and the kind of place where “artisan” means paying six-figure rents so people can post about it on Instagram. All as part of the business plan. I visited his bakery on June 27th of this year, while I was in Copenhagen to finally try Noma.
Mexico’s “ugly and industrialized” bread culture, to quote Hart about it, on the other hand is crafted in the fire of survival and grit, made with the precious local wheat that Americans call more tender “Sonoran wheat,” but just named wheat in Mexico, that makes it to those tens of thousands of remote pueblos scattered across one of North America’s wildest landscapes.
Richard Hart is the latest person who has painted a target on his back to an entire republic, after giving a response to a question about Mexico’s bread culture. One born out of hubris and lack of understanding his privilege.
He thought he could dunk on the workhorse of Mexican bread: bolillos. Like they’re yesterday’s crumbs.