Pan de muerto: a sweet loaf with bones on top

By Isla Quinn

Orange peel. Anise. Warm sugar, sticking to your fingers.

That is the smell of a Mexican bakery when pan de muerto comes out in the weeks before Día de Muertos. The bread is soft, a little eggy, a little sweet. Then there is the top: a round dome with strips of dough laid across it like bones. This piece sorts out what the sources say about the loaf, and where they argue.

What it is

Wikipedia calls it a sweetened soft bread, baked in Mexico and by Mexican communities abroad, and compares the texture to challah or brioche. The base is wheat flour, cane sugar, cow’s milk, butter and eggs. Food Republic, a food magazine, adds yeast and says some versions carry anise seeds and orange blossom. Wikipedia lists orange flower water or orange zest as the common flavorings. The top is coated in sugar, white or dyed pink.

The shapes

Wikipedia says the round bun, with its domed top, is said by some traditions to stand for a grave. Dough bones or skulls are added, often arranged in a circle to suggest the cycle of life. It also mentions a small baked teardrop, which it links to the goddess Chīmalmā weeping for the living. Food Republic mentions a teardrop but does not explain it.

Mexican Folk Art Guide, a hobbyist reference site, describes four crossed dough bones, which it says may stand for the four directions or for “the cycle of death and rebirth,” and a small knob at the center for the skull of the departed. It also reads the orange blossom water and anise as signs of purity and remembrance. These are interpretations, and the sources give them as such. Our reading: the shapes are a language that bakers and families have layered over time, and no one source can fix a single meaning.

Where it goes

According to Wikipedia, the bread is eaten on Día de Muertos either at the gravesite or at a home altar, called an ofrenda. The article adds that in some regions it is eaten for months before the holiday, and that families eat it along with the deceased’s favorite foods. Mexican Folk Art Guide says it sits on altars among candles and cempasúchil petals, and that families break and share it as an act of remembrance. UNESCO’s listing for the Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead places it from the end of October to the beginning of November.

Region by region

The loaf is not one loaf. Wikipedia lists several:

San Andrés Mixquic: despeinadas, topped with sprinkles and sesame seeds.
State of Mexico: muertes made from sweet and plain dough with a little cinnamon, and other breads such as huesos.
Michoacán: pan de ofrenda and pan de hule, and a corn-based item called corundas.
Puebla: a bright pink sugar coating, which Wikipedia says is also seen in diaspora communities.

Food Republic names round hojaldras in Mexico State, Aguascalientes, Chihuahua and Jalisco, despeinadas in Mixquic, and pan de yema in Oaxaca, an egg-yolk bread topped with small faces called caritas. Mexican Folk Art Guide describes Oaxacan breads topped with small marzipan figures, sometimes painted with natural dyes, and says sugar color in Puebla marks age: white for children, red for adults. Food Republic reports that bakeries in Mexico make more than 400 types during the holiday, with possibly hundreds more varieties. We repeat that as the magazine’s figure.

Three origin stories

Wikipedia sets out the competing accounts:

Spanish pan de ánimas, or “soul bread,” a votive offering made for All Saints and All Souls in parts of Castile, Portugal, Aragon and Sicily, and blessed by priests. Wikipedia says that under the Viceroyalty of New Spain it was used by the Spanish and later adopted by Indigenous peoples. Puebla and Tlaxcala still sometimes use the old name.
Pre-Hispanic offerings. Wikipedia says the Government of Mexico, through a national institute, links it to the papalotlaxcalli, a butterfly-shaped tortilla offered to women who died in childbirth, according to the friar Bernardino de Sahagún. A university blog proposes the huitlatamalli, a votive tamale, as another ancestor. The article says this pre-Hispanic account is the most widespread today.
A story that the bread descends from sacrificial hearts placed in amaranth. The article says this origin is not true, though it is often used to interpret the symbolism.

Food Republic folds the first two together. It says the bread itself dates to the early 1500s, links the custom to the Aztec practice of leaving food on tombs, and also cites the medieval Spanish pan de ánimas taken to graves on All Souls Day. It suggests the sweetness came from sugar the Spanish brought to Mesoamerica.

Side by side

Wikipedia says some Mexican public institutions credit pre-Hispanic preparations and omit the Spanish roots. It cites a scholar, Malvido (1999), who argues that the pre-Hispanic attribution is mistaken and the bread is “profoundly Roman” in origin, and another, Brandes (2009), who concludes that the Day of the Dead is largely a colonial invention. Brandes points out that the bread is called pan de muertos and not tortilla de muertos, and that cane sugar did not exist in the Americas before the conquest. Wikipedia also notes that wheat, cane sugar, dairy, butter and eggs all arrived through the Columbian exchange. The ingredients are European. What the bread means is a separate question, and the sources disagree about it.

What kind of sources these are

Wikipedia carries most of the detail. Food Republic is a food magazine. Mexican Folk Art Guide is a hobbyist reference site with no named sources on this page. Britannica, an encyclopedia, supplies only the date. We read no bakery, museum or Mexican government page.

Questions a buyer would ask

Does one shape mean one thing? Not according to the sources: each offers a different reading. Is it only for November? Food Republic says many Mexican bakeries make it only for the holiday, while bakeries elsewhere make it year-round. Who bakes the best one? The sources do not say, and we name no bakery.

What we left out

Recipes and quantities. Prices. The bakers’ decorated wristbands that Wikipedia mentions. Named bakeries and towns beyond the ones the sources list. The religious meaning of All Souls, which is outside what we can source here.

Quick answers

When is pan de muerto eaten? In the weeks before Día de Muertos, according to Wikipedia. UNESCO places the festivity from the end of October to the beginning of November.

What do the bones on top mean? Wikipedia says dough bones or skulls are arranged in a circle to suggest the cycle of life. Mexican Folk Art Guide adds the four directions.

Where does pan de muerto come from? Wikipedia lists three accounts: Spanish pan de ánimas, pre-Hispanic offerings, and a sacrificial-hearts story it calls untrue.

Roam first. Shop later.

/sell-with-sephari/