Mi Receta de Pan de Muerto

This is my second time away from Mexico, where I was born and raised, before Día de Muertos. I have many loved ones to celebrate this for, especially my late dad. As such, I wanted to both make some for the upcoming Día de Muertos (November 2nd) and share this tradition with all of you.

Descansa en paz, papá

This is a combination of a lot of pan de muerto recipes, Sohla Ell-Wally’s Cinnamon Sticky Buns recipe, my Mexican palate, and my amateur baking experience. It’s a very simple, forgiving dough.

Servings: 4 medium-sized panes

Ingredients

• 1 orange, zested (keep the zest)
• Orange zest from an orange
• 3 cups of all-purpose flour
• 0.5 cups of milk (I used skim milk, but any dairy or non-dairy milk does the job)
• 0.5 cups of brown sugar or muscovado sugar (I used muscovado, which has a more traditional flavor)
• 90g unsalted butter (1 stick approximately, omit salt if you use salted butter)
• 0.5 tsp of salt
• 1 large egg (+1 if you want to glaze the bread)
• 1 packet of active-dry yeast

Instructions

Part 1

Dough

1. Add milk and muscovado sugar to a bowl and stir until incorporated.
2. Combine the mixture with the yeast and rest for 5 minutes or until you see foam.
3. Add egg and juice from one orange to the mixture, whisking thoroughly.
4. Add butter, melted to the mixture and stir until combined.
5. In a separate bowl, combine flour, orange zest and salt until well distributed.
6. Next, pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients in 3 batches. In each batch, fold in the wet in the dry until just combined. This will prevent over-mixing.
7. Once mixed, start kneading dough for 10–20 minutes or using a stand mixer for 10 minutes.
8. Form dough into a ball and placed in a greased bowl. Cover bowl in plastic wrap and let rest for 1 hour to overnight (check your yeast packet’s instructions for times).

Part 2

Dough

1. Once dough has increased double its original size, scrape it out of the bowl and onto a lightly floured surface.
2. Divide the dough into 8 pieces. Each pan de muerto will use 2 pieces of dough each.

Base

1. Take one of the eight pieces and form it into a bowl. One way to do this is pinching the piece’s sides to the center, flipping it and gently rubbing it on the counter in a circular motion.

“Skull”

1. Divide one of the eight pieces of dough into three pieces.
2. For the first piece, roll into into a cylinder with your hand in a back and forth motion. The catch is to roll it to half the length of the base, then opening your fingers and roll the cylinder to the length/diameter of the base. This will create the irregular pattern characteristic to the pan de muerto.
3. Repeat this process with the second piece.
4. For the third piece, simply form it into a sphere.

Assembly

1. Place the first two pieces as a cross on top of the Base.
2. Place the third piece (sphere) in the center where the two pieces overlap.
3. Gently push the third piece inwards to add a small depression to the center of the dough
4. (Optional) Brush each assembled dough with beaten egg with a splash of milk
5. Bake at 180ºC (356ºF) for 45 minutes or until golden brown

Finishing Touches

While the Pan de Muerto is still hot, sprinkle with the sugar of your choice. Usually granulated sugar is used, but you could use coarse sugar like turbinado sugar.

I hope you enjoy baking this tradition!