The pastel de nata — Portugal's custard tart — was born in Lisbon's Jerónimos Monastery during the 18th century, where monks used surplus egg yolks to create a secret-recipe pastry that would become the nation's most iconic sweet. By the 1830s, the formula had migrated north to Porto, where local pastelarias adapted the technique to accommodate the Douro Valley's fortified wines and the city's robust mercantile culture. Today, Porto's baking tradition thrives not in monasteries but in private kitchens and century-old family bakeries, where the craft is passed down through demonstration rather than written instruction. A Porto baking class unfolds in residential spaces near Campo dos Mártires da Pátria, where floor-to-ceiling windows overlook the medieval quarter's terracotta rooftops. The workshop centers on laminated dough — rolled, folded, and chilled in cycles to produce the tart's signature flaky shell — and a custard base tempered with cinnamon and lemon zest. Instructors, often third-generation bakers, emphasize oven temperature calibration and the Maillard reaction that darkens the custard's crown without curdling the filling. Most sessions pair the baking process with a tasting of tawny port or vinho verde, illustrating the interplay between Douro viticulture and Porto's confectionery heritage. The city's culinary workshops occupy a middle ground between tourism and cultural preservation. Unlike Lisbon's high-volume pastelarias, Porto's classes cap enrollment at six to eight participants, ensuring direct access to mixing bowls and marble slabs. The curriculum often extends beyond pastry technique to include market tours of Bolhão, where vendors sell Azorean butter, Algarve almonds, and free-range eggs from Trás-os-Montes. This farm-to-table element reflects Porto's geographic position as a distribution hub for northern Portugal's agricultural output, a role the city has maintained since the Age of Discovery. Porto's pastel de nata workshops operate year-round, with morning sessions preferred for optimal dough hydration in the city's Atlantic humidity. The tradition's survival depends less on institutional support than on individual bakers who open their homes to teach a technique that predates industrialized food production by two centuries. Each workshop preserves not only a recipe but also a pedagogical model rooted in apprenticeship, repetition, and the belief that certain knowledge transfers only hand to hand.