I can't get the little bones right

On Wednesday afternoon, between two tax returns, I got a voice message from Ximena. It started like this: "Dad, don't get mad." No voice message that starts like that ends well. It turns out her middle school is setting up a Day of the Dead altar on October 30, each class with its own offering, and when the teacher asked who could bring bread, Ximena raised her hand and announced, out loud and in front of thirty-two classmates, that her dad was a baker.

I am not a baker. I'm an accountant who bakes bolillos on Saturdays, which is something else, as anyone who has tried my conchas can tell you. But I told her yes, of course, how many. She said "like ten," and then, in another message, that twelve was better, in case the other class wanted some. That's how things get negotiated in my family: upward, and over WhatsApp.

The recipe that doesn't exist

The first thing I did was call my mom, who lives with Lupe now, to ask for our family's pan de muerto recipe. She went quiet for a second and then laughed. She told me nobody ever made pan de muerto at home, that my dad bought it every year at a bakery near the San Juan de Dios market, always the same one, and brought it home wrapped in brown paper with the sugar stuck to the inside. "What did you think?" she asked. I remembered the smell. For thirty years I'd put that smell in my mother's kitchen, and it turns out it came from somewhere else.

So the recipe comes from the internet, cross-checked against two books and whatever I could get out of Malena at the office, who has an aunt in Tlaquepaque who has been making it forever. The aunt's advice, delivered by Malena with total seriousness, was: "Tell him not to be afraid of the butter." I wrote it on a Post-it and stuck it on the fridge next to the grocery list.

On Thursday I left the office at seven, which during the week of the 17th almost counts as leaving early, and stopped by the market for orange blossom water and oranges. The woman at the stall asked if it was for pan de muerto and I said yes, and she asked if it was my first time, and I said yes, and she gave me an orange for free. I don't know what my face looked like.

The trial run

Doña Chayo, my sourdough starter, sat this one out. I thought about it a lot, but sourdough pan de muerto takes almost a full day and I had one night. I used packet yeast, which in my kitchen is like betraying a family member. I fed Doña Chayo before I started, just in case, so she wouldn't take it personally.

The dough came out well. Glossy, soft, with that orange-and-orange-blossom smell that fills the whole house and that, this time, really came from my kitchen. I left it to rise in the oven with only the light on, the trick I've used since my first conchas, and while I waited I washed everything, which is the one part of baking I'm genuinely good at.

The problem was the little bones. The strips that go on top in a cross, with the little ball in the middle for the skull. You make them by rolling the dough with your fingers spread so the knuckles show up, and in the videos it looks effortless: a woman with painted nails rolls the dough for two seconds and four perfect bones appear. I rolled and got worms. I rolled harder and got skinnier worms. By the fifth try I had something that, if you were generous, looked like a chicken bone.

I laid them in a cross, baked them, and in the oven the bones puffed up and slid down the sides. Out came six loaves that looked like starfish. Golden, I'll give them that, and they smelled good, but starfish.

The reviews

I ate one at eleven at night, standing in the kitchen, with a glass of milk. It was good. Not like the one from San Juan de Dios, but good. I sent Ximena a photo and she replied with three skulls and "hahaha what is that?" Renata, from her mom's phone because hers had been confiscated, wrote: "they look good dad, don't listen to her."

On Friday morning I took two to the office. Malena cut one open, tasted it and said she was going to send a photo to her aunt. She didn't say whether to show it off or to ask for help. Mr. Ochoa, my boss, ate half without a word, which from him is a compliment.

I saved the last one for Don Cuco, who came by at noon with the two hardware-store receipts he'd been missing on Tuesday, each one tucked inside its own little note. He looked at it, smelled it, and told me his wife, may she rest in peace, used to add anise. Then he told me the bones are made with three fingers, not four, and showed me in the air, above my desk, rolling dough that wasn't there.

It's Friday night now. I've entered the hardware-store receipts. Tomorrow is Saturday, and I have two more trial runs before the 30th, counting this one. On the fridge there's a new Post-it under the butter one, in my handwriting: "Anise. Three fingers." And in the kitchen drawer, next to the hardcover notebook, is the photo of my dad that I'm going to put on our altar at home, for the first time, next to bread I didn't buy.