Pan de Muerto for a good cause

Inside the Eastern Male Prison ( Reclusorio Preventivo Varonil Oriente ), they usually make “bolillos”, bread, but as the Day of the Dead approaches, a team of bakers from the prison, led by Alejandro Pérez , begins making “ pan de muerto ”, the traditional bread enjoyed during the Day of the Dead .

A team of around 30 people who are serving a sentence for crimes committed in Mexico City , make the traditional bread, which is in José María Izazaga 29 in Mexico City .

In the same table where they make the bolillos, there's another mixture, of another color, for men use this dough to create small balls and place them in trays. After they place them on the trays, they butter the dough and place the little “bones” on top, and then place another small ball on top, which represents the skull .

Every day, this team arrives into the bakery at 7 a.m. and start making the bread , which will be prepared until the last weeks of November ; some get the ingredients, others place them on the industrial mixers to prepare the dough.

This season, they make around 400 pieces of bread every day, although it varies depending on their previous orders and their production can reach up to 2,000 pieces of bread . For a few years, people have been able to pre-order bread by contacting the project manager.

In Mexico City , Julio César worked at a bakery , he specialized in French bakery, but he has been in jail for three years, for theft. After entering prison, he had to wait for a year until he was accepted into the bakery, and now he is in charge of making the pastries .

“Although the ingredients to make bread are the same in every prison, we make it with a lot of love and effort for people to enjoy it and have a good experience and of course, so they buy more,” he said.

Julio César

works in silence, he makes the little balls and carefully places the “ bones ” on top of the bread, he doesn't know much about the meaning behind the pan de muerto , but he is aware of its importance because it is the main ingredient in the altars in Mexican homes.

After letting the bread rest for a couple of minutes, the trays are placed in the oven, they are baked for 12 minutes, next to the 20,000 bolillos and teleras they bake for the other inmates.

To finish off the bread, they melt butter and glaze the bread and then roll them in sugar.

Then they place the bread inside skull-shaped-boxes , which were made by hand by the inmates of the Northern Prison, wrapped in paper, ready for them to be sold at the at stores from the Penitentiary System.

For the fourth year in a row, they have baked pan de muerto to sell them on the streets. 118 men and women from the Northern, Eastern, Southern, correctional, and the Santa Martha Acatitla female prison participate, and according to the Penitentiary System Sub-Ministry, this activity helps them financially and for their social reintegration , as they took baking lessons before starting the projects.

“It's a great effort from the inmates, their families are also benefited because they receive a certain amount of money from the sales, as a salary, and many of them give that money to their families, as they're the main providers,” said José Manuel Villafuerte Ocampo, the project manage r.

The pan de muerto is MXN $38 each, and they're sold at the offices of the Penitentiary System , and the pre-orders can be made at the following phone numbers: 51-32-54-00, extension number 1657 and 1654.

The inmates reminded us that with pan de muerto , the busiest time of the year begins, as the baking of Christmas pastries and the Rosca de Reyes begins, although they also make wedding cakes for communal weddings that take place in prisons in Mexico City , and they also make petit fours for some government events.

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