Real Galician Empanada: Why Ours Is Made by a Neighborhood Bakery

Some empanadas look like real Galician empanadas, and some actually are. The difference isn't in the wrapper or the package photo: it's in the dough, the filling, and the hands that make it.

What sets a real Galician empanada apart from a mass-produced one

You can't tell a real Galician empanada from the outside. You can tell once you cut it open.

The dough: not thick, not plasticky

Mass-produced dough tends to be thick, uniform, and can sit in a freezer for months without changing. Good dough is thin, browns unevenly, and actually tastes of something: a little oil, a splash of wine, dough worked properly by hand.

The filling-to-dough ratio

Here's the trick almost no one says out loud: in a real Galician empanada, the filling outweighs the dough, never the other way round. If you cut it open and see more bread than tuna, more dough than cockles, that's not a Galician empanada in front of you. It's a lookalike.

Baked with care, not by the clock

A factory bakes in batches, blind, on a fixed schedule, for thousands of identical units. A bakery that knows what it's doing looks, smells, and pulls the empanada out when it's ready, not when a timer says so. You notice the difference in the first bite.

Why we don't make our own best Galician empanada

At Abuelo Paquito we cook almost everything at home: the callos, the cocotonas, Espe's slow-cooked carrilleras, the caldo, the mussels Chon taught us to make years ago. But not the empanada.

Our empanada is made by a neighboring bakery, the kind that's been around forever, the kind that has spent generations pulling bread and empanada out of the same wood-fired oven. We say that with pride, not as an excuse: some jobs are simply done better by people who've spent half a lifetime doing them. Recognizing that is part of cooking honestly too, just as much as lighting the stove every morning.

That's how our tuna empanada is made, with the usual dough and a filling that isn't stingy. And that's how our corn empanada with cockles is made too, harder to find done well than the tuna one, which makes it more special when you do.

Corn empanada, a recipe that's almost disappeared

Corn empanada is made with corn dough, not wheat. It's more rustic, thicker, with a flavor that recalls the countryside more than a bakery.

Finding a proper corn empanada today, made the traditional way, with real cockles instead of padded-out filling, is getting harder. Many bakeries don't even make it anymore, because it takes longer than a tuna or meat one.

So when the neighboring bakery offered it to us, we tried it the way we try everything in this house: calmly, without rushing, without assuming it was good just because. It stayed on because it earned its place.

How to recognize a real Galician empanada

• The filling is visible and noticeable when you cut it, you shouldn't have to hunt for it.
• The dough isn't uniform or identical from one empanada to the next.
• It smells like the moment it was made, not like a freezer.
• If it's a corn empanada, the dough is real corn dough, not dyed wheat.

How it reaches your table

It's cooked when you order it, shipped cold, and arrives within a maximum of 96 hours, ready to heat in your own oven. You can eat it on its own, or add it to a table full of other home-cooked dishes ready to heat when you have people over.

No brand cooks here: Paquito and Espe cook, with recipes inherited from Chon, Paquito's mother, and with help from people they trust, like the bakery that makes our empanada. That's the only recipe we really follow: do things properly, whether we make them ourselves or someone who knows better makes them for us.