FELIX PACHECO MICHAEL’S KITCHEN

Michael's Kitchen

Felix Pacheco

Felix Pacheco — the pastry chef of 20 years at Michael’s Kitchen — was a miner before baking. He mined coal in Wyoming and molybdenum up in Questa, not far from his home in Arroyo Seco. When he got laid off from the mines, he followed his wife to a food convention, where they had cake-making classes and the like. A woman from Seco’s now-closed Casa Fresen recruited Pacheco to bake Italian breads in the steamy French oven and, though Pacheco had zero experience, he figured he’d give it a shot.

“After you work in the mines and risk your life underground, when you’re going into a different kind of work, you’re not scared,” says Pacheco, 63, who’s been swirling sweets since that first random in. Trading coal dust for white clouds of flour. “The worst thing you can do is burn the bread.”

The best thing you can do is add butter, which is an ingredient Pacheco always has on hand. Butter in the pastries. The old-fashioned way. No regular shortenings. And no specific kind of butter he likes to use, but the higher the fat content, the better.

Makes for a not your run-of-the-mill sticky bun, which is one of Pacheco’s favorite treats to make in the huge drum oven at Michael’s. There, he’s got help — one person on donuts, another on bread and Pacheco doing the rest: eclairs, long johns and scones, to name a few.

“The Danishes fly out of the door,” said the Taos native, who prides himself on early-morning time efficiency — sticking to a system, a routine. “The best feeling in the world is to have the cases empty when I leave.”