Pan de Muertos

This weekend, I got the chance to go make pan de muertos with Anneli and her host family. It was so much fun, both because we got to play with bread dough, and because Anneli's host family reminds me so much of my extended family in North Carolina. It felt surprisingly like home.

Delphilia, trying to show me the right way to shape my hand
so as to make the balls of dough smooth and even.

Anneli wrote a really beautiful post that I hope you'll read about the process and experience. I especially love the final paragraph:

We take home three large cardboard boxes full of bread. Golden brown and colorful, some of it will adorn our Día de los Muertos altar and be an offering to the dead. The rest of it we will share with neighbors and the rest of the extended family, and all will enjoy eating it for the next several weeks. For today, this tradition in honor of the dead has invited us to treasure life and remember those who have died. It has brought together three generations of the living and people and traditions from the north of the United States to the south of Mexico. As far as I can tell, that's what the Day of the Dead is about.