Pan de Muerto and Mexican Hot Chocolate

By Jeni Hill
Food Editor

Share the rich heritage of El Día de los Muertos, The Day of the Dead, with your family and friends by making a unique bread delicacy called Pan de Muerto, or Dead Bread, and Mexican hot chocolate.  Pan de muerto is a traditional food families bake and enjoy on as they observe The Day of the Dead, sometimes celebrating for weeks. This light, anise and orange-scented bread is decorated with bread-shaped bones that symbolize the loss of loved ones.

Though Pan de Muerto is specifically created in observance of this holiday and difficult to purchase in the Fargo-Moorhead community, you can make this delicacy in your own kitchen with ingredients available in local grocery stores. The bread-making process is rather time intensive, but steps are very simple and well worth the effort. While you wait for your bread to rise, consider that Celebrating the Day of the Dead is an opportunity for all of us to remember and honor our ancestors and culture. This holiday is unique because it allows us to remember our loved ones in many ways, including through food. Offerings of food are an essential aspect of this holiday and traditional offerings have included chocolate, amarynth, tequila, and harvest produce like pumpkins and other squashes. 

Now, families honor their ancestors by re-creating their favorite dishes they enjoyed during their lives.  Families eat these beloved foods together and remember their loved ones, offering portions of the foods and beverages on altars created at home.  These altars are often decorated with the deceased’s favorite flavors, sights, and smells including not only foods and beverages, but also flowers, photographs and anything else their ancestors enjoyed.

Pan de Muerto is often enjoyed with Mexican hot chocolate, a unique beverage you can also easily make in your home kitchen.  Mexican hot chocolate is warmly flavored with fragrant spices such as cinnamon, while other versions include chilies. Chocolate, which originates from cacao beans, is increasingly acknowledged as a superfood, containing antioxidants. Although Western culture has recently begun to promote the restorative properties of dark chocolate, the Aztecs have relied on cacao beans for nutrition and energy for centuries.

Visit HPR at http://www.hpr1.com for a detailed cooking video illustrating these processes.

Ingredients:
Three packages of yeast, which should add up to about 21 grams. 
1/3 cup of warm water
2 cups of unbleached, all purpose flour.  You will also need to add more as you knead the dough.
15 teaspoons of raw cane sugar
½ cup of margarine or lard.  We used Crisco shortening. 
3 eggs plus 7 egg yolks.  The yolks will give the bread a warm yellow color
1 teaspoon of anis extract which we found at Hornbachers
The zest from one orange
5 Tablespoons of fresh orange juice, approximately the juice of one orange
1/3 teaspoon of salt.
One and a half tablespoons of chopped pecans.

To make the dough:
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

In a bowl, dissolve three packets of yeast in 1/3 cup of warm water. Gently stir the thick mixture until the yeast dissolves. Slowly add additional flour until you can form the mixture into a ball.  Leave the ball in the same bowl and cover with a towel. Place in a warm place until it rises and doubles in size (this should take 30-60 minutes). We let our dough rise on top of the preheating oven.

In a bowl, sift two cups of flour. Sifting makes the flour light and airy and eliminates any particles.  Place one tablespoon of your flour aside to make the glaze later. Then, create a hole in the center of the flour.

Zest one orange, avoiding the white pith beneath the surface. Then, juice the orange. 

Separate your egg whites and yolks, reserving 7 yolks. Separate the yolks using your hands, or by tipping the yolk back and forth between the two halves of the eggshell.

In the center of the flour, add 15 teaspoons of sugar, a quarter teaspoon of salt, orange juice, orange zest, one teaspoon of anise extract, 7 egg yolks, and two additional whole eggs with both whites and yolks.

Knead the dough together, incorporating the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, gradually adding extra flour until the dough forms a kneadable ball. Flour your surface and dough to avoid sticking.  Knead the dough for about twenty minutes, pulling the outer dough to the center and pushing in. 

Add your sticky yeast dough ball mixture to the rest of the dough you were just kneading. Knead the two doughs together.

When you are finished kneading, form your dough into an elongated ball.  Grab one end of your dough and smack it against the counter as if it were hammer. Push the two ends together, and smack the dough again.  Keep repeating this process four times. Your dough is finished when it begins to form air bubbles, feels more like plastic, and pulls away from the counter.

Form this dough into a ball. Place the dough inside a bowl rubbed with lard and rub the outside of the dough with lard.  This will ensure the dough does not stick to the bowl or dry out. 

Cover your bowl with a towel and let it rise again in a warm location until it doubles in size. This should take about 2 ½ hours.

When the dough has doubled in size, continue the process of forming your dough into an elongated ball and smacking it against the counter.  Again, you are looking for air bubbles, and a smooth plasticky texture that doesn’t stick to the counter.  After you finish smacking your dough, cut off about a third of the dough and form into two balls that will be formed into decorative bones.  Gently knead the chopped pecans into the large bread ball.

Let the large dough ball and two smaller ones rest on top of a greased baking sheet and rest for another 30 minutes.

Glaze:
While the dough completes its final resting, beat one egg into an eggwash.  This eggwash will form a shiny glaze that will help the decorative bones stick to the bread. 

Mix the one teaspoon of flour you set aside earlier with one tablespoon of sugar and two cups of water.  Heat the mixture in a saucepan until the sugar dissolves and it forms a thick glaze.  Cool completely. 

Shaping your bread:

When the dough is finished resting, remove the small dough balls and form into bones.  Form one smaller ball into a skull.  Then, divide the dough balls into smaller portions and roll them into logs, forming indents with your fingers.  The indents can vary in size and length.  Less perfect bones will look more realistic. 

Brush the large piece of dough with the egg wash and stick the bones onto the bread.  Place the center ball onto the top of the dough.  Then, criss-cross the bones around the bread.  You can adjust the size of the bones to fit the bread.  Then, glaze the bones with egg wash. 

Place the bread into a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. 

After baking for 15 minutes, remove the bread, brush with the glaze and lightly sprinkle with sesame seeds.  Lower the oven temperature to 350 degrees and bake for ten more minutes. 

Finally, you will have your finished pan de muerto. You can let the bread cool and re-glaze for extra shine. 

Mexican Hot Chocolate
The Nestle brand of Abuelita Mexican chocolate tablets can be found at Hornbachers.

Ingredients:
1 tablet of Mexican chocolate
3 cups of milk (higher milk fat equals more froth)

To make the hot chocolate:
Unwrap the chocolate and place in the bottom of a pan. Add milk and heat until the chocolate melts.  Stir often so the hot chocolate does not burn.  I used a traditional, Mexican molinillo to airate the hot chocolate and make it frothy. You could use a kitchen whisk or egg beater. 

Eat courageously and explore new foods.

Jeni Hill is an herbalist and food blogger. She has apprenticed for 
Registered Herbalist Lise Wolff and participated in a summer internship at Spoonriver. For More on Jeni Hill visit ]]http://herbalisteats.blogspot.com

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