Stephanie Foden

COMMISSIONS: BREAD OF THE DEAD

In ovens across Oaxaca, bakers are raising the dead. 

The recipe is simple: Mix eggs, flour, yeast, sugar, a dash of anise and let sit. Sculpt the velvety dough into a round body, cut slits for arms and legs, and add the finishing touch: the carita, or little face. Put it in the oven, and watch it rise into a golden pan de muerto—bread of the dead. 

During Día de los Muertos, gifts of sweets, mescal, and pan de muerto are laid out on ofrendas, or altars, to welcome the dead home—but Oaxaca is the only state where the bread stares back. 

  • Pan de muerto sits before it goes into the oven at Panificadora San Martín in Oaxaca City.
  • An altar display with pan de muerto in Zócalo in Oaxaca City.
  • Norma Marcos Sánchez, 23, rolls the dough of the pan de muerto at Café Nuevo Mundo in Oaxaca City.
  • Caritas dry in the sun in the Sánchez family home in Miahuatlán.
  • Guadalupe Sánchez holds a bowl of caritas in her family home in Miahuatlán.
  • Guadalupe Sánchez in her family home in Miahuatlán.
  • Pan de muerto displayed for sale at Central de Abasto market in Oaxaca City.
  • A man delivers bread at Central de Abasto market in Oaxaca City.
  • Ernesto Gonzalez (left) buys pan de muerto with his family from Soledad Martínez García (right) at Central de Abasto market in Oaxaca City.
  • Pan de muerto displayed for sale at Central de Abasto market in Oaxaca City.
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