Master Baker Alex Peña’s Heavenly Pan de Muerto

(Gerry Furth-Sides) Master Baker, Alex Peña’s Dia de los Muertos holiday bread, Pan de Muerto, may look like dough but it literally looks like a cloud in his hands.   It is considered an honor to be gifted with this confection. The bread is elaborate, decorated with skulls and bones, and sprinkled with sugar or covered in sesame seeds depending on region home, on the ofrendas or alter, along with the statuettes of life and death, one on each side.  Peña’s  would be on the altar.  His is the best.

Dias de Los Muertos is a traditional holiday reuniting and honoring beloved ancestors, family and friends who have passed away.  On November 1, children who have passed away are celebrated.  Adults are celebrated on November 2. The bread and other treats they loved in life are set out on the altar so they can “taste” them again when they return home for a brief visit.

Peña grew up making bread.  He was the brother of the three boys in his family who already loved cooking with his mom and grandmother at home.   Alex worked with his dad and his brothers at La Morenita Bakery now closed but still making and distributing their famous tortillas.

His eyes lit us as he told us that the first thing he remembers doing in the bakery as a kid was decorating cakes.  And he has loved it every since.    Alex’s dad was a Renaissance man of many talents, who was equally at ease playing esoteric classical instruments as he was baking, so gatherings of friends and family always meant wonderful music as well as food.  This feeling remains with Alex the minute you meet him.

You can still buy pan de muerto at Panaderías and Latino markets.  These days, but these days Master Baker Peña wears a white lab coat not a bakery apron.  He is Director of Research and Product Development for Bellarise, renowned for developing custom non-GMO baking ingredients for commercial and artisanal customers.  These days, due to the intense increase in home baking, products are also available to retail customers.  For the story, please see:   //www.bellarise.com.   The name on the door in Pasadena reads Pak Group, which is the parent company based in Turkey established close to a century ago.

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) goes back centuries earlier to the Hispanic cultures of Miso-America.  We are most familiar with the Aztecs and Mayans of this group of indigenous people.  However, the bread only dates from the 1940s when it was created by Basque bakers who settled in Mexico City. 
 

This is only one example of the influence of these Basque immigrants from the province of Navarre, Spain who are credited with originating the bakeries in Mexico.  They arrived from the Spanish Valley of Baztán to live in Mexico City at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Ultimately, they became the most important European influence on Mexico’s commercial bakeries, flour sellers, and yeast purveyors.  Cristina Potter’s rich history of how this took place can be found at: (//mexicocooks.typepad.com/mexico_cooks/2018/05/bakeries-and-their-basque-origins-in-mexico-city-please-wash-your-feet-before-entering.html)

Pan de muerto is simply made of flour, butter, lard, eggs, water, cane sugar, salt and of course, yeast.  A unique flavoring employed by the Basques was the very subtle addition of orange flower water instead of the more commonly used cinnamon.  Peña also uses a subtle orange flower water, and found in his research that cinnamon slows fermentation.

After mixing the dough, Alex forms it into rounds  and refrigerates them to ferment, which adds flavor and improves the texture. Handmade decorations resemble crossbones with a skull in the center at the top.

The completed loaf ready to go into the proof box, where it develops for 45 minutes to an hour. The bread is placed in the lab’s revolving oven where it bakes for 25 minutes.

Peña then paints the freshly baked golden brown breads with melted butter, tshen he coats them with sugar.  (see videos below). The custom is to use pink sugar for children and white sugar for adults.   Peña varies some of his loaves  by sprinkling some with sesame seeds and some with sugar.  Different regions in Mexico also each have their own tradition.

Watch Master Chef Alex make the Pan de Muerto on the YouTube show Trippy Food (www.YouTube.com/TrippyFood), hosted by Valentino Herrera