Pan Dulce Katie Edwards 2019-2020

For my project this year, I decided to make Pan Dulce because I wanted to improve my baking skills and explore more of Mexican culture.Pan Dulce is a Mexican sweet bread that is traditionally eaten for . It has two parts: the bread itself and the frosting which is shaped like a conch shell and placed on top of the bread. This type of sweet bread can also be called Conchas so that is why the frosting has a conch design. I used ingredients that I already had in my house so there was no cost for this project. I went to www.pinaenlacocina.com to find the recipe and dealbabakery.com to ​ ​ learn about the origination of Pan Dulce and its cultural importance to .

Goals… While making this project, I had many goals in mind. A few of them are as follows: I wanted to learn more about baking, discover more about Mexican culture, and make my sister happy because she really likes Pan Dulce and has been asking me to make it for her again.

Supplies… ● Large bowl ● Whisk ● Microwave ● Large spoon ● Measuring cups ● Cookie sheets ● Parchment paper Ingredients ● Active dry yeast ● Honey ● Warm water ● Sugar ● Butter ● Eggs ● Flour ● Powdered sugar ● Vanilla What I did…

1. The first step of this project is combining the yeast, honey, and warm water. Once the yeast was in, I let it sit for about 10 minutes.

2. In a large bowl, I mixed the sugar and butter, then added in the eggs and the yeast mixture. Once those things were well mixed, I slowly added in the flour.

3. After everything was all mixed together, I covered the dough with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place for 1 ½ hours.

4. Once the dough had risen, I punched it down and divided it into 14 equal pieces, then put the parchment paper on top of the baking sheet and set the balls of dough on it to rise, covered, for another hour.

5. While the bread rose, it was time to make the frosting. I mixed together flour and sugar, then added in vanilla and butter and adjusted the amounts of flour and butter depending on how dry/sticky the frosting was.

6. Finally, I shaped the frosting into conch shapes, placed them onto the dough, and put it all in the oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees, turning them halfway through so they would bake evenly.

After I completed this project, I learned many things. Firstly, I learned more about baking, specifically how to determine how long to put the bread in the oven as every oven is different. For instance, I originally made these without parchment paper with the full time listed in the recipe, but found that the bottoms were getting burnt when the tops weren’t completely finished. Because of this, I started putting the dough on parchment paper to protect the bottoms and baked them at a lower temperature since my oven runs hot, which causes the bread to be baked unevenly. I also learned more about Mexican culture from completing this project. Pan dulce was first made back during the Spanish Conquest when the Spanish brought wheat to Mexico. For a while they just made regular bread but thought that it didn’t have a lot of flavor, so when someone decided to dip their bread in hot chocolate to give it a better taste, the people started making sweet bread instead. The people’s sweet tooth came from when France had control over Mexico, which influenced Mexican bread making for years to come. After the invention of Pan Dulce, the people of Mexico created more types of bread for different occasions, such as (Bread of the Dead) for .