vegan pan de muerto recipe

[Guest guest]

What with day of the dead coming up and all, I got bored today and

decided to make some pan de muerto, one of the traditional foodstuffs

for this celebration. Usually it's a chewy egg bread, but i

substituted banana for egg and it is as chewy as i think any bread

should be, and i mean this in a good way.

 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup soy milk, rice milk, whatever

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 package active dry yeast

1/4 cup very warm water

3/4 to 1 whole banana. If you have something worth doing with 1/4 of

a banana, use 3/4, that's what I did, but a whole one wouldn't hurt.

3 cups all purpose white flour

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoons sugar

a little bit of water or orange juice

 

 

Heat " milk " until it starts to bubble. The soymilk I used started to

get a skin pretty early on, try to avoid this. I don't really know

if it would pose a problem but it looks weird... Remove from heat,

add 1/4 sugar and salt, stir until it is dissolved.

 

In a large bowl, mix yeast with warm water until dissolved and let

stand 5 minutes. Add " milk " mixture.

 

Mash banana well with a fork, add a tablespoon or so of soymilk or

water if necessary to obtain a pretty goopy consistency. Brown

bananas would be great for this. Add flour to yeast/milk/banana

mixture, blend with wooden spoon until it forms into a dough ball.

Knead in the bowl for a bit to gather up any straggling dry flour

patches, then knead on a lightly floured countertop until the dough

is smooth and consistent.

 

Throw it in a bowl and cover w/ a towel, let rise in a warm place for

90 min. Put some wax paper on a baking sheet, or grease it really

well.

 

After the 90 minutes, knead the dough again, then separate into four

equal parts. Roll three of them into long " snakes " , pink together at

one end, braid, and pinch at the other end. Cut the other fourth

into two equal pieces, roll them into " snakes " and cross them over

the braided loaf. These are supposed to represent bones. Put it on

the baking sheet, cover with towel, let rise another 30 min.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees and mix 2 tablespoons sugar

with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon.

 

After it rises again, brush the top of the bread with a coating of

water, or I used orange juice, so that the cinnamon and sugar will

stick. Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar mixture over the loaf, except for

the " bones " , if you're a hardcore traditionalist.

 

Bake for 35 minutes. Some of the sugar on the bottom edges of the

loaf may carmelize or burn, sticking the loaf to the sheet, but it's

easy to remove once it cools.

 

Eat it yourself or offer it to your dead relatives! Be sure to leave

a trail of yellow marigolds so they know where your house is...