Pan de Finados Yucateco (Xtuchitos)

This bread belongs to Yucatán. Not to central Mexico, not to the pan de muerto with orange-blossom glaze and crossed bones you see in every Mexico City panadería on November 2nd. Xtuchitos come from the Maya villages of the Peninsula, from Yaxcabá, Hocabá, Sotuta, the small towns south of Mérida where Hanal Pixán is still observed the way the abuelas remember it.

The word xtuchitos comes from the Maya, the diminutive ending tying the bread to children, because these figures are baked for the altar of the angelitos, the souls of the little ones who return on October 31st. The shapes are not random. A muñeca for the girls. An iguana, a paloma, a perrito for the boys, the animals they would have played with had they lived. In some houses, a small cross of dough is laid on top. The figures sit on the altar beside cups of atole, small jícaras of chocolate, and toys made of palm.

The seasoning is what makes this bread Yucatecan. Anise and allspice. Pimienta gorda, the green-skinned allspice tree that grows wild across the Peninsula, is the spice that anchors recados, the spice you smell walking through the Mercado Lucas de Gálvez in Mérida. The orange-zest pan de muerto from the center of the country is a different bread. This one tastes of the Peninsula. Manteca, not butter. Naranja agria, not sweet orange. And the figures, shaped by hand, are a Maya gesture, not a Spanish one.

My mother never made xtuchitos. She was from Jalisco and she made pan de muerto the central-Mexican way. The recipe in my notebook came from doña Reyna in Yaxcabá, who let me sit in her kitchen for three days in October of 2011 while she shaped figures with her granddaughter. She told me: the dough is the same dough women have made here for generations, but the shapes are what carry the prayer. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.