Pan de Carita de Miahuatlán

This bread comes from Miahuatlán de Porfirio Díaz, in the Sierra Sur of Oaxaca, two hours south of the capital on the road that climbs into the mountains toward Pluma Hidalgo. It is not the pan de muerto of Mexico City. It is not even the pan de muerto of the Valles Centrales. It is its own tradition, and it belongs to the panaderas of Miahuatlán, the Sánchez family chief among them, who have been pressing painted faces onto bread for generations.

The cabecita is the heart of it. A small figure made from a separate, stiffer dough, sculpted by hand into an angel, a calavera, sometimes a Frida Kahlo with the joined eyebrow and the flower crown. The cabecita is sun-dried for two days on a cotton cloth, then painted with vegetable dyes the panaderas have always used: grana cochinilla for red, cempasúchil for yellow, añil for blue, carbón vegetal for black, achiote for orange. The painted figure sits on top of the pan de yema and goes into the oven painted side up. It hardens like ceramic. The Sánchez children grow up watching their mother paint these in the back of the panadería on a long wooden table.

The bread underneath is pan de yema, the everyday enriched bread of Oaxaca, leavened with pulque blanco and built on egg yolks, manteca, anís, and agua de azahar. Pulque is not a substitute for yeast. Pulque is the leavener. The wild yeasts in the fermented agave give the bread a tang and a slow, deep rise that commercial yeast cannot duplicate. If you can find good pulque blanco, use it. If you cannot, this is one of the few times I will tell you what you are missing and let you make a compromise.

My mother had a single line in her notebook about Oaxacan bread: 'mas yema de la que crees, y manteca, no aceite.' More yolks than you think, and lard, not oil. She was right about that and she was right about most things. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.