Pan Resobado de Zaachila

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Long wooden artesa or sturdy kneading table
• •Kitchen scale that measures in grams
• •Large clay or wooden bowl for the rise
• •Comal for toasting the ajonjoli
• •Molcajete for crushing the anis
• •Small barro rojo cazuelitas for mixing the colorants (one for each color)
• •Soft natural-bristle brush for the egg wash
• •Heavy sheet pans or a baking stone
• •Damp cotton servilletas for covering the rises

Instructions

1. 1

   Prepare the artesa and the ingredients

   Pan resobado is a worked dough. Resobar means to knead and knead and knead again. Before you start, clear a long wooden table or counter, what the panaderas in Zaachila call the artesa. Have everything weighed and ready: the flour in a heap, the sugar and salt to one side, the yeast in its own bowl, the lard and butter softened to where you can press your finger through them. Cold lard will not incorporate. Cold butter will tear the dough. Asi se hace y punto.

   Weigh, do not measure by volume. Pan dulce is a panaderia tradition and panaderias work in grams. A cup of flour can vary by 30 grams depending on how it is scooped. That difference will show up in the crumb.
2. 2

   Wake the yeast

   Warm the milk to body temperature. Not hot. If you can hold your finger in it without flinching, it is right. Pour into a bowl and stir in the yeast and a tablespoon of the sugar from the recipe. Let it sit for ten minutes until it foams and smells like beer. If it does not foam, the yeast is dead and so is your bread. Start over with new yeast.

3. 3

   Build the dough on the artesa

   Mound the flour on the table. Make a well in the center, the way the panaderas of Mitla and Tlacolula have done it for generations. Into the well go the egg yolks, the whole eggs, the rest of the sugar, the salt, the orange zest, the canela, the toasted ajonjoli, and the crushed anis. With your fingertips, beat the eggs and sugar together inside the well. Pour in the foamed yeast mixture. Begin pulling flour from the inside walls of the well into the wet center, working in spirals. The dough will come together shaggy and sticky.

4. 4

   Add the fats and resobar

   Once the dough has pulled together, work in the softened lard first and then the butter, a spoonful at a time. The dough will fight you. It will look broken. Keep working. This is where pan resobado earns its name. Lift, slap on the table, fold, push with the heels of your hands. Twenty minutes of honest kneading, minimum. The dough will go from shaggy to smooth to silky. When you press a finger into it and it springs back slowly, you are done. La cocina no es decoracion, es trabajo.

   Do not add extra flour to make the kneading easier. The fat is what makes this dough sticky and the fat is what makes it tender. Flour the table only lightly. The stickiness will resolve itself as the gluten develops.
5. 5

   First rise

   Set aside about 200 grams of the dough in a separate bowl, covered, for the petal work. Place the rest in a large bowl rubbed with a little manteca. Cover with a damp cloth servilleta. Let rise in a warm corner of the kitchen for two to three hours, until doubled. Oaxacan kitchens are warmer than most. If yours is cool, set the bowl near the comal or in a barely-warm oven.

6. 6

   Mix the vegetable colorants

   While the dough rises, prepare the colors. Each colorant goes in its own small clay bowl, a barro rojo cazuelita is traditional. Add water a teaspoon at a time and stir with the back of a spoon to make a thick paste, like the slip a potter uses. The red from grana cochinilla will stain your fingers. The yellow from cempasuchil smells of marigold and the dead. The pink from palo de Brasil is the deepest of the three. Set them in a row alongside the reserved dough. These are the threads with which you embroider the bread.

   If you cannot find vegetable-based colorants, food-grade powders dissolved in water will work, but the panaderas of Zaachila use the traditional pigments because they are colorfast on dough and because cempasuchil is the flower of Dia de Muertos. The choice of color is not decoration. It is meaning.
7. 7

   Shape the loaves

   Punch down the risen dough on a lightly floured surface. Divide in two. Shape each half into a tight round, tucking the seams underneath until the surface is taut. Place each loaf on a sheet pan lined with parchment or, if you have one, on a hand-woven petate. Press each loaf down gently to about three centimeters thick. The bread is wider than it is tall. This is not Mexico City pan de muerto. There is no bone shape, no cabecita on top, no sugar dusting. The flat round surface is your canvas.

8. 8

   Embroider the petals

   Now the work that gives this bread its name and its meaning. Tear small pieces from the reserved dough. Roll them into thin coils, oval pads, and tiny droplets between your palms. Press one side of each shape into a colorant paste. Arrange them on top of the loaves in the patterns of the flowers your family or your town remembers: cempasuchil with yellow petals around a red center, rosa de Castilla in pink, the field flowers of the Valles Centrales. The panaderas of Mercado Alarii work without templates. They embroider from memory. Every loaf is different, the way every textile from a Zapotec weaver is different.

   Press the petal pieces firmly enough to bond with the loaf below but not so hard that you flatten the design. A light egg wash brushed on the loaf surface before you place each petal helps the colors adhere through the bake.
9. 9

   Second rise

   Cover the decorated loaves loosely with a damp cloth, careful not to disturb the petal work. Let them rise again for one to one and a half hours, until visibly puffed but not doubled. Pan resobado does not want a high domed crumb. The dense, even crumb is part of what holds the petal embroidery in place during the bake.

10. 10

    Bake low and steady

    Heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (340 Fahrenheit). Lower than most bread recipes. The lower temperature lets the enriched dough cook through without scorching the surface or burning the vegetable colorants, which turn brown if the heat is too aggressive. Brush the exposed dough surface, between the petals, very gently with the egg wash. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes, until the bread is deep golden between the petals and the bottom sounds hollow when you tap it. The petals will set in their colors but darken slightly. That is correct.

11. 11

    Cool and serve

    Let the loaves cool completely on a wire rack before cutting. Pan resobado is a dense bread by design, and cutting into it warm will tear the crumb. Serve in thick slices alongside chocolate de agua frothed with a molinillo, or set whole on the ofrenda for the days the dead come home. In Zaachila this bread sits beside the cempasuchil and the photographs and the candles, and it is eaten by the living the morning after, when the dead have taken what they came for. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

Chef Tips

• •Buy your manteca from a carniceria, not a supermarket. The hydrogenated lard sold in tubs is bleached and deodorized and will give you a flat, characterless dough. Real rendered pork lard from a butcher has a faint roasted aroma that you want in the finished bread. La manteca es el sabor.
• •Grana cochinilla, the cochineal that gives the deepest red, can be found in Oaxacan herboristerias and through specialty Mexican spice suppliers. Cempasuchil powder is sold dried in bags during the months around Dia de Muertos. If you cannot find them, ask at any Oaxacan tianguis or at a curandero's stall. The vendors will know.
• •Pan resobado does not rise as high as a French brioche, and it should not. The dense crumb is the point. If your bread comes out airy and tall, you under-kneaded the dough or used too much yeast. Resobar means to knead again and again. Twenty minutes is the minimum, not the maximum.
• •If you cannot find a panadera willing to teach you the petal patterns in person, study photographs of Oaxacan textiles from Teotitlan del Valle and San Antonino Castillo Velasco. The flower motifs translate directly. Preguntale a las senoras del mercado.

Advance Preparation

• •The dough can be made the night before, given its first rise in the refrigerator overnight, and shaped the next morning. The slow cold rise actually deepens the flavor.
• •The vegetable colorant pastes can be mixed up to one day ahead and held at room temperature, covered, until you are ready to embroider.
• •Pan resobado keeps for three to four days wrapped in a clean cloth at room temperature. It does not refrigerate well, the cold dries it out. It freezes acceptably for up to one month, wrapped tight, but the petal work loses some of its definition on thawing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 210g)