It’s not often you see people using pointed elbows to jockey for space in line at a family-operated bakery, but such was the fervor surrounding Jennie Bäckmann’s German cheesecake at Pan de Cada Dia Bakery in Brownsville.
Made from a recipe learned at her mother’s side in Cologne, Germany, the cake consists of a delicate balance of cream cheese (replacing the traditional German quark), sour cream enlivened with a touch of lemon, and a crunchy topping of sliced almonds and butter crumble. Maybe it was the novelty of the dessert’s provenance to those in the Rio Grande Valley or the aesthetic elegance of its dainty-yet-sturdy architecture, but when Bäckmann posted a photo of it on the shop’s Instagram account last September, chaos ensued.
While many ogled a display version near the register that day, one customer had the temerity to jump to the front of the line and grab the cake. Recriminations about retail etiquette followed, and Bäckmann, along with her husband and business partner, Thomas, reclaimed the prized dessert until cooler heads could prevail.
Although that kind of tumult is unusual in their day-to-day lives, the fevered reaction to Bäckmann’s baked goods is not. Opened in February 2024 in the South Texas town where her father was born, the store became a favorite of locals who warmed to Bäckmann’s European-inspired offerings almost immediately.
“They first took some Mexican cookies,” she says of those early days. “The next step was familiar-
looking options like an apple turnover or Danish. It was step by step.”
Repeat customers began referencing Pan de Cada Dia as “the German bakery”—likely to differentiate the shop in a town full of panaderías. After a year, the Bäckmanns leaned into their German heritage. Gone were the early attempts at Mexican cookies, and into the cases went pudding pretzels, Danish-like obstplunder made with laminated dough, Nutella twists crafted from German puff pastry, sourdough croissants, and, around Christmastime, Elisenlebkuchen.
The latter, a chocolate-covered cookie, smells and tastes like the holidays thanks to its pronounced gingerbread profile. But this isn’t spice dumped out of a box. Bäckmann finely grinds hazelnuts using a nut mill she inherited from her German grandmother and mixes it with a secret family spice blend exhibiting hints of ginger, cardamom, and clove. Rounding out Bäckmann’s Elisenlebkuchen is almond flour, rum, candied lemon, and orange peel. This painstaking attention to detail—one eschewing additives and preservatives in favor of natural ingredients—has made Pan de Cada Dia such a draw.
“It’s always fresh,” Bäckmann says. “It’s always the best ingredients. And it’s healthier than what you find in the supermarket.”
The desire to create healthier baked goods was one of the main factors that led to the creation of the RGV bakery. The couple and their two young children emigrated to Texas in 2021. After a miserable experience working in the bakery department of a big box store, Bäckmann prepared a batch of potato bread for her husband, who had been struggling with stomach pain and skin irritations connected to eating processed store-bought loaves.
Thomas wasn’t the only one impressed with the results. Bäckmann’s father, Alfonso Ortiz, who met Bäckmann’s mother in the 1970s in Houston, also saw the promise in her baking prowess during a visit from Germany. He shared one of the exceptional loaves with his brother-in-law and former Brownsville mayor Tony Martinez. According to Martinez, he knew from the first bite that his niece had una buena mano, a good hand.
“She told me she had a dream to open a bakery,” Martinez says, “and I think everybody should follow their dreams. When I was mayor I would think about how you give people the opportunity to succeed at what they want to do.”
A former bakery owner himself, Martinez gave Bäckmann access to some of his old commercial equipment, which she utilized to start a home baking operation built through social media and word of mouth. The popularity of the pop-up, which lasted about a year, inspired the business partners to use a vacant retail space owned by Martinez to test out Pan de Cada Dia (Martinez derived the name from the Spanish version of the Our Father prayer) as a brick-and-mortar mainstay.
The 43-year-old Bäckmann, who visited family in Brownsville both as a child and a high school exchange student, said she has always felt at home in the town where the paternal side of her family has lived for more than 100 years. Not only does she appreciate the warmer weather and the sunshine but also the people who have welcomed her and supported her culinary dream.
“Good food makes you happy,” Bäckmann says. “Like Thomas always says, ‘It matters why you do something. If you love to do something, it shows.’”
Sometimes that love—like a certain German cheesecake—can make people so happy they can barely contain themselves.
