Pan de jamón

Pan de jamón is a wheat bread made from a soft, slightly sweet dough, rolled out, topped with ham, raisins and olives, and rolled up like a jelly roll before baking. Sliced, it reveals a spiral of filling. It is Venezuela’s Christmas bread: it appears in bakeries in December and shares the table with the hallaca.

Few Venezuelan dishes have a known date and place of origin. Food journalist Miro Popić, author of a book dedicated to pan de jamón, found the first record in a December 1905 advertisement: a bakery on the corner of Gradillas in downtown Caracas offered "pan con jamón." The recipe made use of ham pieces left on the bone, wrapped in bread dough. By the following Christmas, other bakeries in the city were competing for customers with their own versions.

The filling developed over time. Around the 1920s, raisins and olives were added, and many family recipes included bacon. The sweet-and-salty combination, with papelón (unrefined cane sugar) in some doughs, brings together Caribbean and European flavors in a bread Venezuelans consider their own.

In the 1970s, according to Popić, Caracas restaurants began serving pan de jamón alongside hallaca, chicken salad and roast pork as part of the so-called plato navideño, which became the Christmas dinner for much of the country.

In December, bakeries bake hundreds of loaves per day for Christmas and New Year’s; outside the season, some make them to order. With Venezuelan emigration, pan de jamón began to be baked in bakeries in other countries as well.