Day of the Dead calls for Pan Día de los Muertos.
Let’s see how one bakery makes it.
Día de los Muertos, the festival that honors the dead, falls on Nov. 1 and 2 every year and is celebrated in Mexico and throughout Latin America.
This year, it also marks the 39th anniversary of La Estrella Bakery, where the Franco family has been baking pan de muerto — sweet, round loaves full of symbolism — for Día de los Muertos.
“We actually opened on Oct. 31, 1985, just in time for Día de los Muertos,” says Erica Franco.
Her parents, Marta and Antonio Franco, founded the bakery after immigrating to Tucson from central Mexico in the 1970s.
The bread’s base is soft and rich, with lots of eggs, butter, sugar, cinnamon and orange zest. “Traditionally, anise is used to flavor the bread, because it’s said to have a cleansing scent, to ward off evil spirits,” Erica Franco says, “but our customers prefer the orange and cinnamon flavors that we use.”
After the dough is mixed and kneaded, it gets a long rise. Then, it gets shaped into rounds.
Each round is decorated with ropes of dough that have been stretched and indented to approximate the shape of bumpy bones.
“The breads usually have five ‘bones,’ which were meant to represent the five fingers of the hand of the dead,” Erica Franco explains, “but our big loaves have more, because people love how crunchy these pieces of dough get once they’re baked.
Before they’re baked, some of the loaves get a dusting of sesame seeds, a request from customers who don’t want such sweet bread.
After they’re baked, the loaves without sesame seeds get a generous brushing of syrup made from local honey and cinnamon sticks, which slowly soaks into the center of each loaf, keeping it moist.
The syrup also acts as a glue for colored sugars, which are mixed at the bakery and sprinkled on top in various patterns.
When a figure is decorated with red or pink frosting or sugar, it symbolizes a dead adult relative; the color white, an emblem of innocence, symbolizes a deceased child.
Let’s take a look…
