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Bones on a bun
Pan de muerto is a sweet bun with bones on top
Pan de muerto is a sweetened soft bread shaped like a bun, often decorated with bone-shaped pieces of dough. Some traditions say the rounded top is a grave. A baked tear drop stands for the goddess Chīmalmā's tears for the living, and the bones are often set in a circle for the circle of life.
The recipe
Anise, orange and a baker's decorated wristbands
The classic recipe is a simple sweet bread, often with anise seeds, and sometimes flavoured with orange flower water. Its texture has been compared to challah and brioche. The baker will usually wear decorated wristbands, a custom that began as protection from burns at the stove or oven.
Soul bread
It began in Spain as soul bread, blessed by a priest
The bread has its origin in the pan de ánimas, soul bread, once prepared for All Saints and the Faithful Departed in Castile, Portugal, Aragon and Sicily. Parishioners came each year to the cemetery and put bread, wine and flowers on the graves. The priest blessed the bread, so it was also called blessed bread.
The essence
The spirits are said to take the essence, and the living eat the rest
Pan de muerto is eaten at the gravesite or at the ofrenda. Loved ones eat the bread and the relative's favourite foods, but not the food placed on the ofrenda. It is believed that the spirits do not eat, but absorb its essence, along with water, after their long journey back to Earth.
“Eating the dead is a true pleasure for the Mexican, it is considered the anthropophagy of bread and sugar.”
José Luis Curiel Monteagudo, quoted on pan de muerto
A tale
A tale of a heart and a bun is told about the bread, and it is not true
A repeated myth says a maiden's heart was offered to the gods in a pot with amaranth, and that the conquistadors replaced the heart with a sweet bun. That origin is not true, but it explains the bread's meaning: the circle is the cycle of life and the ball of dough is the skull.
Day 2, midday
It comes after Mercado Benito Juarez. Then Santo Domingo Cultural Center.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Pan de muerto, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.