Dish of the Week: Fig Bread at Buford Highway Farmers Market

I am fixated on figs.

The $1 fig bread at Buford Highway Farmers Market is the latest way I’m getting my fill. Called pan de higo, it's stuffed with chunks of dried Mission figs and the entire roll gets dusted in sugar. I made the mistake of buying only one loaf when I should have grabbed a dozen.

Maybe my love affair with this ancient fruit isn’t my fault. Perhaps I was born with it. After all, my name means “fig tree” in Old Castilian (before the letter F was replaced by an H).

Decades ago, when I studied in Spain, I raided my host family’s fridge of far too many figs. We had spent the day visiting friends in a mountain village. It was a fine exchange of conversation. But I could not stop eating the table offering: a motherlode of just-harvested figs. And when we got home, I ate more. And when everyone went to bed, I tiptoed to the kitchen and gorged on more.

Funny enough, I married a man who shares my affinity for figs. He likes to grow them and is an obsessive pruner. It is high fig season right now and we’re both waging a battle against squirrels who think they have a right to these fleshy, heavenly spoils.

We may have even handed down our fondness for figs to our high school son. The morning I discovered that fig bread in the baked goods case at Buford Highway Farmers Market, I thought I was being oh so generous by bringing it home to share. I managed to nab a wee slice. He devoured the rest.

It’s pretty hard not to fall for figs.

Buford Highway Farmers Market, 5600 Buford Hwy., Doraville, 770-455-0770, aofwc.com.

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