Culture of Halloween is extremely colorful and varied worldwide and thanks to traditions it is possible to have a very high range of variants and daily formulas depending on the place or region of the world where you are, but this festivity also has its side gastronomic , so today you will know the value of bread of the dead in Mexican culture, a perfect gastronomic offering directed the deceased from the world of the living or rather a mortuary banquet turned into a work of art of the bakery .
The culture of celebrating death in Mexico
While the culture of Halloween as well as the day of the dead in much of the world is marked by sadness and tears in Mexico the case is absolutely the opposite, because this celebration is surrounded by color and festive climate to change to a celebration of the living reuniting with the deceased, where indeed there is the belief that they return to our world for a day.
A celebration that maintains its origins in the ancient Mesoamerican cultures, where many of its native peoples organized festivals and rituals to manage to lead the dead to their final destination “the Mictlán” or underworld of Mexican culture and mythology. Where according to ancient legends the god Quetzalcóatl “in the form of a feathered serpent” descended to the underworld and deposited its fruit on the remains of bones to give life to the human being. Representation that evidently symbolizes the seed of life for these peoples.
The bread of the dead as the value of this celebration
Without a doubt a gastronomic contribution highly prominent of these regions that is consumed and manufactured in the months of October and November to make it coincide with the celebrations of the Day of the Dead, which although it maintains different meanings throughout the various areas or regions, manages to unify in a more or less defined criterion the emblematic celebration and the Mexican cult of death as an extension of life.
The bread of the dead means or makes a special allusion to death and specifically to the body of the deceased, a bread with a round structure garnished with dough bones and featuring eggs, wheat flour, sugar, butter as the main ingredients and garnished with a generous topping of sugar and generally perfumed with essence of anise or of orange
The history of the bread of the dead can be traced back to the time of the Spanish conquest, where the conquerors frightened by the cruel scenes of the sacrifices carried out in indigenous rituals elaborated a wheat bread dipped in sugar painted red for symbolize the heart and the blood shed during the sacrifice.
Various variations of the bread of the dead and the same meaning
In the Michoacan area, the bread of the dead is offered in a somewhat more humanized form as well as animals or flowers, it is usually placed on altars as an offering to the deceased . In Guanajuato it is also very common to achieve it with a glazed point that would represent the soul of an adult and in case of being white it would be the representation of the soul of a child.
In many other areas, such as Oaxaca, it is usually prepared with a puff pastry and is presented as an offering for souls (whether of people or animals), it is also decorated with sesame and sugar. It is also possible to get it in the form of a donut decorated with pink sugar or in a yellow color equal to the yolk of the eggs.
But its best-known image is that of a round bread with a cross in its center , that is, the most traditional representation of the bread of the dead and that is generally achieved in bakeries or in the busiest cities, it is bathed in sugar. and sesame.
A bread with an ancestral value for a celebration of the living to the dead
A tradition that is lost over the years and that evidently shows the close bond that exists between the living and the dead, Mexican culture has managed to assimilate death as an extension of life and as a path that we all must travel based on having been born in this world, the Bread of the Dead honors and pays tribute through gastronomy to the deceased and represents them on that single day where beliefs merge and where it becomes possible to live together in peace and harmony with loved ones who have already abandoned us.
The celebration of Halloween is especially rooted and mixed with the day of the dead or the dead so if you want to know much more about it you can learn to cut out a pumpkin for Halloween , a fun idea to decorate your spaces in these upcoming festivities and set the scene in a different and fun way.
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