How I failed the Pan de Muerto Challenge

Every year now in October, I begin following the X/Twitter exploits of Rodrigo Delgado, the Mexico City food writer and flaneur who makes it his business to sample and rate every possible pan de muerto in the capital city. He calls it the Pan de Muerto Challenge.

This year Delgado tasted 115 of the sweet rolls baked to celebrate Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, when Mexicans traditionally make home altars and flock to graveyards to honor the dear departed. I always make a point of reading his posts in Spanish first, the better to expand my critical food vocabulary.

That's the most fun part for me: learning how to say stuff like "un ligero aroma a azahar," (a light aroma of orange blossom); or "azúcar empalagosa y un resabio amargo," (cloying sugar and a bitter aftertaste); or my 2025 favorite, "sabor y olor a plástico quemado," (flavor and smell of burnt plastic).

That was the pan de muerto he bought from Starbucks, and he concluded his 5-line obituary with, "one of the worst breads I've ever tried." And he's tried a lot, canvassing sources from artisanal bakeries, traditional neighborhood bakeries, coffee shops, even industrial bakeries that distribute to stores and shops.

I have grown to appreciate Delgado's scholarship of the pan de muerto form. He differentiates between the use of orange rind and orange-blossom water. He calls out the use of sesame or anise seeds. He celebrates the use of real butter as opposed to margarine, decrying the latter with the withering "apesta de margarina," (reeks of margarine).

Delgado's admiration for "huesos crujientes," or crunchy bones, opened up a new textural window for me to judge the shapely, raised dough squiggles that criss-cross the top of the pan de muerto bread dome. They are meant to signify arm and leg bones, and the little round globe that appears on top symbolizes the human skull, yet another edible memento mori.

He's a poet of the genre, too. Upon discerning the use of baking soda instead of the traditional yeast, he called one of this year's pastries "un pan de refri con pretensions," (a soda bread with pretensions). Of another sweet roll, he noted it as "uno de esos panes que saben a hogar," (one of those breads that tastes like home). At the end of this year's survey, Delgado wrote a 24-line rhyming ode to his pan de muerto quest, in which the Grim Reaper himself makes an appearance.

So yeah, I viewed Delgado's project as an ambitious undertaking. But I had no idea how ambitious until I decided to do a mini-tasting of the genre here in Houston, where Dia de los Muertos is an increasingly big deal. Turned out I had nowhere near Delgado's fortitude or tolerance for sweets, or the will to press onwards despite, um, less-than-optimal circumstances.

I began, full of enthusiasm and appetite, at my neighborhood El Bolillo, Houston's popular homegrown panaderia chainlet. On my first visit, in mid-October, I scored a giant loaf crowned with sesame seeds, and smaller version dusted with pink sugar.

I scanned the shelves in vain for one of the amorphous-baby-shaped breads called muertitos, in which I had taken a certain morbid pleasure last year, but no go. The muertito is just one of the many traditional Mexican regional variations on the holiday loaves, which can vary in flavorings, shapes and sugar colors.

It was my first hint that shopping for pan de muerto at El Bolillo involves luck of the draw. Different versions emerge from the back bakery rooms at different hours. Sometimes, especially at the end of October when the fever runs high, you'll see dozens of people milling around the door from which the baked goods emerge, big aluminum trays in hand, waiting to pounce on the latest pan de muerto edition.

I quickly realized that when it came to tasting and thinking about my samples, I was no Delgado. About the sesame-seeded mega loaf, I noted: "light orange flavor. Very dry crumb shading to a moister interior. Bones a little chewy rather than crunchy."

I left most of it uneaten, until in my online research, I discovered that many users slice the large loaves and toast or pan-grill them with butter. Trust me, this is transformative—especially with loaves that are past their prime.

Of the rose-pink number, I jotted down "infantile pleasure of sweet airy crumb. Citrus trace overshadowed by sugar. Crumb a little moister than the sesame loaf, so it's easier to love."

The next day, I went for breakfast at La Guadalupana bakery-cafe's new Pasadena edition, and afterwards scored a two-fisted, sesame-seeded pan de muerto loaf from a glass cake stand in a place of honor. To my delight, there was also a creepily humanoid muertito on offer, covered in lurid red sugar.

I felt like I had just won at bingo, and I paused to pay homage at La G's ofrenda, the Day of the Dead altar set up in homes and businesses to honor loved ones who have passed on.

Back home, I weighed the big round loaf on my kitchen scale. Half a pound of pan de muerto! I admired its glazed egg wash and shiny sesame seeds. "Soft, airy dry crumb," I noted. "Actually semi-crunchy bones...I kinda get what Delgado means now. No detectable citrus. Rounded butter undertone, nuttiness of sesame and little twinges of aniseed, visible as dark flecks throughout. Very lightly sweet, which I like, but the dryness does it in."

Aniseed, it turns out, is one of those regional pan de muerto variations. So is the red sugar that rained off my little muertito, which turned out to be the kind of fried bread loaves called hojaldras. Think fried dough from a carnival midway, rather than a sweet, enriched dough like a traditional pan de muerto.

Only two stops and four variations in, I could feel my enthusiasm for the pan de muerto project sapping away. Yes, La Guadalupana's old-school aniseed loaf was superb when sliced and pan-grilled with butter. But I could already feel my tolerance for the sweeter pan de muerto manifestations ebbing.

I meant to venture in search of the modern-day Houston variations I had heard about. The big, pricy, stuffed versions at Cucharita, including a trendy Dubai chocolate filling. The weekend version at Third Place, filled with mamey cream and dusted with coconut-ash and sugar to achieve a sepulchral shade. Saturday's colorful variants from Ruben Ortega at Urbe, from shocking pink to some coated in more of that ash-black sugar.

Ortega had made the most memorable pan de muerto I ever tasted for a Day of the Dead weekend brunch at Xochi some years back, its dough swirled with a huitlacoche glaze. Savory pan de muerto? Why not?

I love the evocative floral quality of orange-blossom water, which I first encountered in a long-ago Ramos gin fizz made by a French Quarter bartender. Maybe I'd seek out what was sure to be a sanctified orange-blossom pan de muerto from Stephanie Velasquez at CasaEma, if I could get up early enough to stand in the weekend line.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. The last few weekends in October found me sleeping in, shirking, feeling guilty. I made a few more halfhearted stops at El Bolillo, thinking I'd find a muertito (nope), or a fresher, softer-crumbed version of the round form. I did, too: by pure luck, I happened in when a fleet of big, white-sugared crowns had just left the oven.

Mine was still warm and soft and beguiling when I got it home, and I could see the little flecks of orange rind scattered throughout. The bones had a nice snap to them. I felt like I had won the El Bolillo lottery.

Finally, as a sort of desperate last gasp on November 2, the actual Day of the Dead, I purchased a box of 3 small, white-sugared pan de muerto loaves from my neighborhood H-E-B. They were set out on a long All-Hallows-themed promotional table.

They were terrible. I can't even think of a worthy, Delgado-esque phrase to convey their stiff, sugary badness.

I was done. Over it.

Until next October, of course, when I hope to start earlier and redeem myself.