Honouring heritage through the ritual of breaking bread
Mexico City, Mexico
At Exp Maiz, the making of pan de muerto becomes an act of remembrance, a multi generational endeavour that transforms ancestral knowledge and seasonal tradition into something tangible and deeply nourishing.
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The making of pan de muerto at Exp Maiz exists as something far more profound than the production of a seasonal delicacy. Each morning, as Donovan and Dominique shape the dough, they engage in an intricate choreography of craft that weaves together the contributions of multiple hands and generations. Irene’s pulque provides the fermenting foundation; Adrian and his daughter Mariela nixtamalise and mill the maize that has been cultivated and harvested by Rosa and Miguel. What emerges is not merely bread, but the embodiment of a complete agricultural and artisanal ecosystem, one in which every contributor holds an essential place.
The impulse behind this seasonal offering carries profound personal resonance. The founder recalls searching through photographs of their grandmother, Luchi, to arrange for an altar, and in doing so, found themselves flooded with memories of her relentless devotion to her craft. The family home existed as a space of constant culinary activity, with women moving through the patio and an adobe oven breathing warmth into the courtyard. The air perpetually carried the scent of rendered fat; blue buckets bearing the Manteca de Morelos insignia lined the kitchen. Luchi baked until her hands would no longer obey her will, and the founder accompanied her to market to witness something remarkable: people purchasing bread less for sustenance than for the opportunity to spend a moment in her presence, to hear her voice, to feel the particular grace she extended.
Bread as Congregation
The pan de muerto at Exp Maiz serves as a contemporary continuation of this understanding: that bread transcends its role as nourishment and becomes instead an instrument of connection. The founder and their sibling, in the manner of children everywhere, would steal away into the darkness to filch an extra piece, having already consumed their fifth that day, eating hurriedly and in secret to avoid maternal reproach. These small moments of transgression existed within a larger ecosystem of generosity and openness, a household whose doors remained perpetually unlocked, where the simple act of breaking bread together constituted the primary language through which community was expressed.
To maintain these memories alive, to preserve the particular flavours and wisdom that Luchi imparted, to keep the doors open as she did, constitutes a form of intimate proximity to her presence. Each morning’s work alongside Dominique honours not only a grandmother but an entire lineage of knowledge, one that insisted that the work of feeding others possessed a nobility equal to any other pursuit. The pan de muerto emerging from Exp Maiz this season carries within its structure the accumulated devotion of several households and the quiet conviction that some things, once learned, must never be allowed to fade from the world.
Imagery courtesy of Exp Maiz (@exp_maiz).
