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Pandesal (sometimes spelled pan de sal) is the most loved, most popular bread in the Philippines. It literally translates into “bread of salt.” No one really knows why it’s called that since the first time “pan de sal” was used in the Philippines, as in Spain, was as a measure for salt. There is pan de sal (a small lump of salt as big as a bread bun) and the larger torta de sal (a cake of salt that was flat and resembling a cake in size). Could be a case of the chicken or the egg — or, shall we say, the bread or the salt? Either way, the French have baguette, Italians have ciabatta, and Filipinos have pandesal.

A Brief History of Pandesal

Wheat-based baked goods were not a thing in pre-colonial Philippines. It wasn’t until the age of exploration and colonization in the 1500s that the knowledge and ingredients of bread-baking made their way into our cuisine via the Portuguese explorers, who pre-dated the Spanish explorers by at least a decade.

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The rumored first iteration of this bread was pan de suelo (floor bread) because it was baked directly on the “floor” of a wood-fired oven called pugon. A pugon is similar to an Italian pizza oven and is derived from the Spanish word “fogon,” meaning wood-burning stove. Pan de suelo was originally modeled after the french baguette in terms of texture. Bakers initially used wheat flour, which gave the bread a heartier crust.

Filipino bread production didn’t really take off until the age of industrialization and the changing of colonizers from Spain to America, in 1898. During the American colonial era in the Philippines, the influx of industrialized goods — from canned milk to milled flour — became more accessible. The cheaper American flour resulted in softer bread and, along with the modernization of gas-powered stoves and ovens, gave birth to pandesal.

Pandesal is now ubiquitous all over the 7,107 island-archipelago nation. No mornings nor merienda (snack time) are complete without it. It’s the bread for all dining occasions. Mornings are usually spent scouring the local panaderia (bakeries) for the freshest pandesal from the pugon, although there has been a decline in pugon bakeries due to the nationwide ban on using mangrove trees for fuel and a shift toward gas-fueled stoves.

Pandesal Today

Living in Iloilo City, on a different island from Manila, we still had a couple of pugon bakeries. It was a sought-after treat, as the bakeries would usually sell out by mid-morning. We used to line up as early as 5:30 a.m. to just grab a bag (or two) to eat with our almusal (breakfast).

There are still panaderias that make pandesal traditionally — by hand, cut with a wooden knife, dusted with breadcrumbs, and baked in a pugon. The typical pandesal is small and oval-shaped with narrow, pointed leaf-like edges on the top that differentiate it from any other roll.

In panaderias, the traditions and techniques are learned from the maestro panadero (master breadmaker) and passed down from one baker to another. The title maestro panadero isn’t given through certificates or culinary school but through years of apprenticeship and mastery of bread.

The maestro makes pandesal as he learned from the maestro before him. Old recipes utilize the sponge and dough method: the sponge (starter dough) is made first, then mixed with the second set of ingredients to form the dough. To develop its structure and flavor, it is fermented for several hours on a wooden trough, known as a bangka, which means boat or canoe.

When the dough is ready, it’s formed into logs, called bastones, which is Spanish for cane or walking stick. The bastones are then rolled in breadcrumbs, which are often made from toasted older bread. The dough is cut into smaller pieces using a wooden cutter that gives each pandesal its distinct leaf-shaped mark.

This mark gives the traditional pandesal its distinct shape, but is not required. A lot of the modern pandesal iterations are rounded, more like the Mexican bolillos. This specific technique is known only within the older generation of maestro panaderos, which we fear is a dying breed and will then be lost with them.

Pandesal at My House

Throughout my childhood, pandesal was a staple in our house. We had it for breakfast, paired with sunny-side-up eggs or used to make breakfast sandwiches. At merienda the rolls were stuffed with ice cream from the sorbetero, or paired with Tang orange juice. And for lunch, pandesal would be eaten with pancit or dipped in soups. There’s rarely a meal that doesn’t involve pandesal.

No Filipino gathering is complete without our version of fruit salad — a creamy, luscious concoction that’s brimming with juicy fruit and drenched in sweetened condensed milk. When I was growing up, my mom brought this refreshing fruit salad to each and every birthday party, graduation, and holiday celebration. It’s her go-to sweet that she’s slowly perfected over the years.

There are no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to Filipino fruit salad. Outside of using canned fruit and sweetened condensed milk, no two fruit salads are alike. This recipe is inspired by the one I grew up eating.

Ingredients You Need to Make Filipino Fruit Salad

There are many, many versions of fruit salad out there. As long as you use a mix of canned fruit and sweetened condensed milk, the rest is completely customizable.

Canned tropical fruit salad. Typically, this salad is made with canned fruit cocktail (peaches, pears, grapes, pineapple, and cherries). But I tested a version with canned tropical fruit salad — featuring tender pieces of pineapple, papaya, and guava — that I found extra delightful. The recipe below calls for tropical fruit salad, but you are welcome to use fruit cocktail, or a mix of the two.
Canned peaches packed in juice. My mom alternates between adding canned peaches or pineapple to her fruit salad. I call for peaches because I’ve always been a fan of their supple sweetness. If you like, feel free to use pineapple chunks in place of the peaches or substitute an equal amount of canned mandarin oranges or lychees.
Frozen young coconut (kinayod na buko). This is the soft, tender flesh of young coconuts. It is commonly found in the frozen section of Filipino grocery stores. If you can’t find it, you can use a jar of macapuno (also known as coconut sport string), which are cultivated from a variety of coconut with a jelly-like texture.
White nata de coco (coconut gel). A Filipino specialty, these translucent, chewy cubes are made from fermented coconut water.
Nata de piña (pineapple gel). Jelly-like cubes made from fermenting pineapple juice. If you’re having a hard time tracking it down, you can use another jar of nata de coco in its place (the more, the merrier) or just go without.
Sweetened condensed milk. The backbone of Filipino fruit salad, which provides its creamy sweetness. Compared to other recipes, I like to use less liquid to ensure that the fruit is nicely coated in the “sauce,” as opposed to swimming in it.
Sour cream. You’ll mostly see recipes calling for heavy cream or even cream cheese. My mom has always made her fruit salad with sour cream and, even though I’m somewhat biased, it’s the best. The slight tang of the sour cream balances out the sweetness from the condensed milk.

How to Make Filipino Fruit Salad

From start to finish, this recipe for Filipino fruit salad has just three steps and comes together in about 30 minutes (most of that time is inactive prep!). You’ll begin by opening up all of the cans and jars and draining each ingredient in a large colander. Draining helps rid the fruit of excess moisture, ensuring that your salad is creamy rather than soupy.

In a large bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk and sour cream. Stir in the drained fruit, cover, and refrigerate until it’s thoroughly chilled. As soon as it’s cold, help yourself to a bowl — it’s great as a mid-afternoon snack or as a light dessert.

This dish evokes memories of my childhood on the North Side of Chicago, where I grew up in a large and established Filipino American community. It is closely intertwined with my experiences of the Filipino and Asian food markets we frequented for our pantry staples. (This was before the “International” aisle existed in mainstream grocery stores.) These markets left an indelible sensory memory that still lives in my nose. They smelled savory and earthy — like dried, salted, and fermented things — and the air inside always carried a whiff of briny seafood and a note of musty cardboard from the many items that had traveled halfway around the world.

We went to markets like RC Trading, Unimart, and Việt Hoa to buy live crabs for ginataan na alimasag (crabs in coconut milk), a dish that hails from Bicol, the region in southeastern Luzon where both of my parents grew up. Buying the live crabs was a trip! They were always trying to crawl out of the paper bag we took them home in, and made lots of noise in protest of their captivity. When we got home from the market, I would sit on a chair next to my mom at the sink and watch her clean the crabs, snapping their claws off so they couldn’t pinch her.

The version of the dish I’m sharing here — called ginataan na sugpo — is made with head-on prawns (sugpo), which are more readily available than live crabs. It will always be in rotation in my home kitchen because it includes two hallmarks of Bicolano cooking: the savory use of coconut milk, and spicy heat! Thanks to those small, immigrant-owned markets in Chicago, this dish connected me to my roots and gave me a taste of where my parents are from.

My mother always made this dish with greens. In a kitchen garden in the Philippines, you might find gabi (taro leaves), talbos ng kamote (sweet potato tops or shoots), or dahon ng sili (chile leaves.) Here I use leaves from the chile plants in my backyard. (This year I’m growing a spicy Indonesian heirloom chile called lombok.) Baby spinach would be a delicious substitute, and it’s what my mom usually used.

In the Philippines breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and if you travel there you’ll see there are breakfast offerings everywhere you go. While foods like pandesal or taho (soft tofu with tapioca pearls and brown sugar syrup) are popular, more often than not breakfast includes some sort of rice. Sometimes its sweet, like kakanin or champorado (chocolate glutinous rice porridge), and other times it’s savory, like lugaw, and my personal favorite, sinangag.

What Is Sinangag?

In Tagalog, sinangag translates to “garlic fried rice,” and it’s exactly as it sounds: rice fried with a generous amount of garlic, salt, and pepper. Sinangag is often combined with itlog, meaning “egg,” creating the popular Filipino breakfast silog.

In the Philippines, silog is often served with a protein, the name of which will precede the word itlog in the title of the recipe. For example, if you serve spam with sinangag and itlog, you’d call it “spamsilog.” Silog served with tocino (sweet and savory pork) is called “tocilog,” while silog served with longanisa (sweet and savory sausage) is called “longsilog.” Bangus (bang-oos), or milkfish, is a popular fish eaten in the Philippines, and when served with silog, it’s called “bangsilog.”

How to Make Sinangag

Because the heart of silog is the garlic fried rice, that’s what I’ll be teaching you how to make here. It’s incredibly simple, and if you have leftover rice, it only takes a few minutes to prepare.

You’ll start by prepping the garlic: Slice 4 cloves and mince 4 cloves. Then, season cold leftover jasmine rice with the minced garlic, kosher salt, and black pepper. (You can also use leftover sushi rice, but know the end result will have sticky clumps). I usually spread the rice onto a large baking sheet to evenly season it, but you can also accomplish this in a large mixing bowl. Seasoning the rice is necessary to let all those garlic flavors shine!

Next, sauté the garlic slices in a splash of canola oil until the edges begin to turn golden, stirring often to scent the oil. Add more oil and the seasoned rice to the skillet and toss until the rice is evenly coated in garlic oil. Spread the rice across the surface of the skillet and cook until a crust forms. Most of the garlic should be golden-brown to deep golden-brown, and the rice will have deep delicious garlic flavor. If you don’t like crispy rice bits in your fried rice you can skip this step, but in my opinion this is the very best part. Serve with your favorite protein and fried eggs.

At Kitchn, our editors develop and debut brand-new recipes on the site every single week. But at home, we also have our own tried-and-true dishes that we make over and over again — because quite simply? We love them. Kitchn Love Letters is a series that shares our favorite, over-and-over recipes.