'My father was everything': At this Mexican bakery, these sisters honor their dad's memory - AZCentral.com

Priscilla Totiyapungprasert Arizona Republic

Published 8:30 AM EST Dec 20, 2019

The holidays keep sisters Lourdes Marquez Adame and Claudia Marquez Ortega busy at their Glendale business, La Fama Mexican Food and Bakery.

Every year around Thanksgiving and Christmas, tamales, masa and tortillas are in high demand. Since the end of October, the sisters have made about 40 to 70 dozen tamales a day with the help of their daughters, cousins and family friends.

The long-standing bakery has served the West Valley community for 45 years. It also represents the legacy their father, Obdulio Marquez, left behind.

In 1974, Marquez opened La Fama bakery on the northwest corner of 53rd and Glendale Avenues. Today, his daughters still use his recipes.

How La Fama makes tamales from scratch

On a recent Monday afternoon, Adame gave a tour of the place where she's spent much of her life, a tan building with "La Fama Bakery" painted in red block letters on the outside.

Plump bags of masa sat slouching in the fridge. While customers picked out polvorones and conchas in the front, one of Adame's cousins dusted sugar on the elotes — a type of pan dulce that somewhat resembles an ear of corn — in the kitchen.

Adame, meanwhile, already had a pile of corn husks with masa spread on them as she completed an order for red chile tamales.

Making the masa happens in the room next door, which used to be a dry cleaner's when the bakery first opened. Now it serves as a storage room, makeshift office and space to grind the maize.

As she explained the process of making tamales, Adame sifted through the kernels of maize, which are cooked in lime water in metal pots. When full, each pot weighs anywhere from 150 to 250 pounds, Adame estimated.

In the mornings, Adame or other workers move the maize to the grinding tray, add water and grind the maize into masa. They wheel the bins of masa to the kitchen where they bag some of it to sell. Most of it they put in a mixer, where they add shortening and a few other ingredients. They then bag sothe masa preparada to sell as well.

The rest goes to making tamales stuffed with red chile and beef, red chile and pork, green chile and corn, or — for dessert tamales — strawberry or pineapple preserves.

The bakery has always been a family affair

Adame thinks her father, who died in 2011, would be proud of her and her sister for their work ethic and for continuing to make food his way from scratch.

"By the time I was 16, I already learned how to do everything," Adame said. "He didn’t have the patience to teach us. He said, 'If you wanna learn, you have to stand there and watch us.'"

Marquez came from a small town in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. As a child he would tag along with his older brother, who worked at a bakery. That's where he learned how to bake, Adame said.

Eventually, Marquez made his way to Phoenix, where he worked in the bakery department at Bashas'. After meeting Adame's mother, he opened La Fama in Glendale with his younger brother Manuel.

Adame recalled how, when school was out of session, her father would wake her and her two siblings before sunrise. Along with a few cousins, the youngsters would pile sleepily into a van and travel from their house in south Phoenix to the bakery.

There he and Manuel would assemble the team. Adame, who was around 5 or 6 years old, was given the task of forming the bolitas of dough for tortillas. Manuel, the right-hand man who still works at the bakery today, made chicharrones. They would use the leftover lard to make tortillas.

'My father was everything to me'

Adame described her father as having a lot of energy, despite subsisting on coffee, cigarettes and, sometimes, two raw eggs with a bit of Coca-Cola during the day.

"My father was everything to me," Adame said.

Marquez didn't have an education beyond grade school, but he was self-taught, she said. In his spare time he read books about cowboys and history, regaling Adame with stories of Pancho Villa and the Adelitas in their family, women who fought in the Mexican Revolution.

The former mariachi performer would whistle throughout the day, and sing songs by Pedro Infante and Jorge Negrete as he worked. He would pretend to not hear his children if they spoke English because he didn't want them to forget their Spanish.

Adame described Marquez as tough, but charitable and open with his affection. He gave his children hugs, but also spanked them if they didn't follow his instructions.

After suffering a series of break-ins at the store, he began giving bread and tortillas to homeless people in their Glendale neighborhood. He hoped to deter people from smashing the windows to get food and it worked: The break-ins slowed down, Adame said.

“We had to learn how to work to survive in this life," Adame said. "That was his thing. He was like, 'I don’t wanna see you out there begging for money. I don’t wanna see you out there doing drugs or doing this and that. You either work or go to school.'”

Why Adame won't eat tamales on Christmas

The Christmas Eves of Adame's childhood were spent at the bakery, accommodating the lines of people who showed up for masa and last-minute tamales.

"For Christmas we were always here," Adame recalled. "My dad never closed."

Adame and her siblings used to complain about working on Christmas. Around 9 p.m. the family would make their way home, where Adame's mother prepared Christmas dinner. She would have ham or sometimes a pork leg in the oven, along with menudo or pozole.

They were allowed to open one present at midnight and then at 4 a.m. Christmas Day they were back at the bakery.

One thing they didn't eat for Christmas: tamales.

"Around this time, I can’t even look at a tamale right now," Adame said. "We make them all day, every day."

La Fama Mexican Food and Bakery

Details: 5328 W. Glendale Ave., Glendale. 623-931-1460, https://ift.tt/2PILDBp.

What local businesses are opening in your neighborhood? Reach the reporter at Priscilla.Totiya@azcentral.com or 602-444-8092. Follow her on Twitter: @PriscillaTotiya.

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