Pan de jamón

Pan de jamón, meaning ham bread, is a Venezuelan Christmas bread: a yeast dough filled with ham and baked as a loaf. The classic filling is York ham with raisins and green olives, often stuffed with red pepper, and the dough is enriched with butter, egg and milk. Later variations fill it with turkey ham and cream cheese, fried plantain, smoked ham with four cheeses or tomato sauce, and make the dough from puff pastry, corn bread or cassava. The recipe is attributed to a Caracas bakery owner named Ramella in December 1905. Other bakeries copied it, one adding raisins, and by the 1920s varieties with almonds, olives, walnuts and capers existed. It displaced the ground corn arepa made with hallaca stew dough that was served at Christmas festivities, and it became an essential December dish on Venezuelan family tables.