Shanah Tovah from Boyle Heights: Apples and Honey Sopapillas at Panadería Brooklyn

Shanah tovah from Panadería Brooklyn! My little Mexican-Jewish bakery, devoted to celebrating the cultures of East LA through (mostly) Mexican-Jewish fusion food, is back with something special for Rosh Hashanah: apples and honey sopapillas.

I started Panadería Brooklyn, along with baking partner Brigitte, in part as an exploration of my family’s East LA heritage—you can read more about that in my intro post, in which I baked up some Mexican black-and-white cookies.

Unfortunately, the details of said heritage are mostly lost to the sands of time. I knew my grandmother lived in Boyle Heights for several years as a child, but that was about it. I was vague on the dates, and unsuccessful in pinpointing a precise address. I don’t think my grandmother talked much about that part of her childhood, or if she did my mother doesn’t remember. Sadly she passed away when I was four, far too young to know to ask her about Boyle Heights, or anything else.

But a few weeks ago, my mother found something fantastic while sorting through some old papers: an adorable vintage postcard addressed to my great-grandmother, Esther Elster, addressed to her at “423 So. Fickett St., Los Angeles, Calif.” Sure enough, that address is smack dab in the middle of Boyle Heights.

The postcard is undated, but since it’s addressed to “Miss Esther Elster,” and my grandmother married in 1930, it’s a pretty sure bet it was sent sometime in the 20s. It was sent by a “Mr. and Mrs. M. Elster and Family,” who I’m sure must have been Esther’s brother Max and his wife. I don’t know enough Yiddish to understand the text on the front of the postcard, which features a young man and woman in a rowboat, but if anyone reading does and wants to share a translation it would be very welcome!

(As an aside, there’s a very cool history of 1920s Rosh Hashanah postcards, the best known of which were produced by the Williamsburg Arts Company, which, weirdly, was based in Brooklyn but had its cards printed in  Germany. This one states that it was printed in Saxony, so I’m guessing it’s from Williamsburg Arts. If you want to know more about this, check the articles listed in my sources at the bottom.)

Esther moved to Arizona after she got married (to her first cousin, as one did in those days; confusingly, her last name was Elster both before and after marriage), where my grandmother was born, before returning to LA a few years later.

I had always thought that, after spending some time working as a seamstress in New York, where she arrived via Ellis Island with her widowed mother around 1920—she was the youngest of a large family, and the last to immigrate from Poland, about which more in another post—Esther went directly to Arizona (where other Elsters were living at the time), and married there.

But it makes sense that she would have detoured to LA, where her brother Max and sister Sophie both lived.  Still, this postcard raises as many questions as it answers: Who was she living with out there? Her mother? Sophie? No one? And why did she and Morris Elster, my great-grandfather, make that detour to Arizona?

Okay, now onto the food. For the uninitiated, sopapillas are fried dough squares (or shapeless jaggedy-edged forms, if you are me), kind of like fry bread, or a beignet. They can be sweet or savory, though my version, naturally, is sweet. If you roll the dough out thin enough, they puff up when you drop them into the oil. Eaten fresh out of the fryer, they’re pretty heavenly.

You can find different versions of the sopailla elsewhere in Latin America (Chile, for one), but, at least in the United States, they’re best known as a New Mexico specialty. Sadly, the historical record on the sopapilla seems pretty scant, but this variant is thought to have developed in New Mexico around 200 years ago.  The word “sopapilla” probably derives from “sopaipa,” which refers to bread soaked in oil.

You may be thinking that they’re not entirely unlike Sephardic bimuelos. And you’re right. According to culinary historian Gil Marks, the practice of frying pastries made from cooked flour dates back to ancient times, but the tradition was lost in Europe after the fall of the Roman empire. It was revived in Spain in the early medieval period, by Moors and Sephardim, who began deep-frying balls of yeast dough, which evolved into such beloved pastries as the churro and the bimuelo. Marks writes that in Spain, after the Inquisition, fried dough dishes came to be seen as signs of Jewish or Moorish heritage, and that many Converso families traditionally prepared fritters each December, around Hanukkah time.

So there’s definitely a common origin between the bimuelo and the sopapilla, and, New Mexico being an area with a high concentration of Converso settlers, it seems not entirely unlikely that there’s an even stronger connection.

Sopapillas are often served with honey and powdered sugar. To Rosh Hashanah-ize these, I’ve kept the honey, ditched the powdered sugar, and added a grated apple into the dough.

I adapted this recipe from A Cozy Kitchen’s take on the sopapilla.

Apples and Honey Sopapillas

2½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons sugar

1 large apple, grated

1 tablespoon honey

¾ cup soy, almond, or oat milk (or other non-dairy milk of your choice)

Canola or peanut oil, for frying

Honey or silan (date syrup), for drizzling

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Add the grated apple. Next, create a well in the center of the dry ingredients and pour in the honey and milk. Mix the dough together until it forms a sticky mass. Cover the bowl and allow the dough to rest for about 20 minutes.

In a cast iron skillet or medium pot, add enough canola or peanut oil to reach approximately 3-inches up the sides. Heat up your oil to around 300° F.

Lightly flour your work surface and rolling pin. If the dough is sticky, sprinkle it with a bit of flour. Dump the dough onto the counter and roll into a thin (1/8” thick) square. Cut the sopapillas into approximately 4 x 3” rectangles.

Line a baking sheet or plate with a few layers of paper towels. Heat the oil up to 375° F. Drop the sopapillas in the hot oil, frying two to three at a time, for about a minute, flipping them over at the halfway point. They should be lightly golden brown—not too crispy. Transfer them to the bed of paper towels to drain. Repeat with the remaining sopapillas.

These taste best straight from the fryer to a plate to being consumed but if you want, you can reheat in a 250° F oven for 5 to 10 minutes. Drizzle with honey or silan immediately before serving.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Gil Marks, 2010); “Happy New Year from the Center for Jewish History,” Center for Jewish History (2012); “Happy Rosh Hashanah! Images of Jewish New Years’ Past,” The Bowery Boys: New York City History (September 24, 2014)