Regañadas Oaxaqueñas

This is from Oaxaca. From the panaderías of the Valles Centrales, from Tlacolula and Zaachila and Mitla, where lamination is done by hand at four in the morning and the lard is rendered in the back of the bakery from local pigs.

A regañada is a sheet of laminated dough, rolled until you can see through it, baked until it crackles, and dusted with canela sugar. It looks simple. It is not. The flake comes from the manteca de cerdo and the cold rest between turns. Use butter and you have made a French pastry. Use vegetable shortening and you have made nothing worth eating. The Oaxacan panadera will tell you the same thing: manteca, only manteca, and let the dough rest as long as it asks for. La manteca es el sabor.

On Día de Muertos, the regañadas go on the altar. One pastry for each soul expected home that night. Stacked next to the pan de yema, the chocolate de agua, the mezcal, the cempasúchil. They are not decoration. They are food for the dead, who arrive hungry from a long road. The crackle of the pastry under a thumb is part of the welcome. My mother was from Jalisco and she did not make regañadas, but I learned them from doña Eulalia in Mitla in 2009, who learned them from her mother, who learned them from hers. Doña Eulalia rolled hers so thin you could read the newspaper through them. She told me, sin prisa, mija, sin prisa. The dough does what the dough does and you wait for it. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.

This is not a Mexico City recipe. This is not pan de muerto. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Oaxaca.