Pan de Muerto Yucateco con Anís

This is the pan de muerto of Yucatán. Not the orange-zest version from Ciudad de México with its white sugar dome and butter crumb. The Peninsula has its own bread for the dead, and if you are setting a Hanal Pixán altar in Mérida, Valladolid, or any town in the milpa belt of the south, this is the bread that goes on it.

The defining flavors are anís en grano, toasted whole and left whole in the crumb, and agua de azahar, the orange-blossom water that every Yucateca panadería keeps next to the manteca. The fat is lard, not butter. The finish is pink or red sugar, not white. Each of those choices is a regional fingerprint, not a preference. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and Yucatán has been making this bread its own way for generations longer than the modern pan de muerto poblano-capitalino has existed.

The modern Mérida variation tucks queso de bola, the Edam cheese in red wax that Yucatán adopted from Dutch trade routes through Holbox and Puerto Progreso, into the center of the loaf. The cheese softens during the bake and pulls in long threads when you tear it open. The older country version is unfilled and eaten with chocolate de metate or a cup of xocolatl beaten with anise and clove. Both are correct. Both belong on the altar.

My mother's notebook does not have this recipe. She was from Jalisco and her Día de Muertos bread was the central Mexican one with sesame on top. I learned this version from doña Genny in a panadería off Calle 47 in Mérida, where she worked the dough in a wooden artesa and refused to weigh anything because her hands knew the weight. I weighed everything when I got home and converted it for the rest of you. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.