On the Table

from North Coast Journal 10-28-2021 Edition

by North Coast Journal

NCJ Daily Online

Sweet O erings

El Pueblo’s pan de muerto

By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

onthetable@northcoastjournal.com

In the little workroom in the back of El Pueblo Market Panaderia (312 Washington St., Eureka), a young man in a fl our-dusted apron leans over the worktable to knead a pale yellow dough, putting his weight into it. Engelberto Tejeda, the shop’s owner, reaches over, the sleeves of his crisp, white button down rolled to his elbows, and pinches o a couple pieces. These he quickly rolls into bone shapes with the fl at of his palm before pressing them into the top of a round of dough, a fi nal button at the center to form a traditional Mexican pan de muerto, or “bread of the dead.”

There are small buns and one big enough to serve as a generous throw pillow, as well as muertitos, little fi gures splashed with pink sugar. All these will adorn local tables and ofrendas, or altars for lost loved ones, ahead of Dia de Los Muertos Nov. 1 and 2. And while El Pueblo won’t be nearly as busy as it is in January with the sale of Rosca de Reyes, or King’s Day bread, a steady stream of loaves will make their way out the door this week.

Tejeda’s practiced ease fl ipping dough into crescent rolls and rolling it into bright, sugar-topped conchas was not always so natural.

After fi rst coming to the U.S. from Jalisco, Mexico, in 1978, with stints working in asparagus and tomato fi elds in Stockton and at a vegetable market in San Francisco, at a tortilla factory and truck driving school, Tejeda started working in distribution, setting up Mexican goods sections in markets big and small. On a trip to Eureka to visit family, he noticed few places to buy Mexican goods and moved to Humboldt with his wife and three children to open a shop.

Tejeda started out with an even tinier shop (the retail space at El Pueblo’s current digs take only a couple strides to cross) on California and Wabash streets, before moving to Broadway, which had plenty of room for baking and pastry cases. To fi ll those cases, he hired Antonio Noguéz, an older baker from Mexico who’d worked in bakeries since he was an adolescent, and he whipped up everything from pan dulce to cookies and cheesecake.

“When he came in, he told me he wanna teach me to bake,” says Tejeda with a shrug. He declined, preferring to stick to the retail sales skills he’d already honed. But when Noguéz fell ill and went into the hospital, his absence left the shelves bare. Tejeda says his wife helped care for Noguéz, who recovered enough to come back to work, but it was clear retirement was imminent. So Tejeda yielded and learned to make the sweets for which the shop had earned a devoted following.

Noguéz would sit and give instructions, pointing and estimating measurements for the recipes he’d baked from memory for decades. Tejeda says the older man would tell him, “‘OK, put two scoops of fl our, one sugar,’ … but nothing come out.” He laughs and passes his hand over his slicked back hair. It took long hours of apprenticeship and practice until he could turn out Noguéz’s specialties. Noguéz died years ago, but the sweets behind the counter and the pan de muerto that appears at El Pueblo every October are faithful to the recipes he knew by memory and taught by look and feel.

When the Broadway location burned down in 2017 (“Customers Rally Behind El Pueblo Market Hit by Fire,” Feb. 8, 2017), the operation moved to Redwood Acres and fi nally found its home on Washington Street, where the Tacos El Pueblo food truck, a business expansion started a few years ago, sits parked out front.

“Everybody make di erent,” says Tejeda, his splayed hands circling in the air. But El Pueblo’s pan de muerto are made with a yeast dough enriched with egg and fl avored with cinnamon. Some are brushed with an egg-and-milk wash for a glossy fi nish, some get sprinklings of sesame seeds or a swipe of butter before they’re dusted with sugar.

At the register, Tejeda says the buns will last at least a week — they’ll still be soft after days on a family ofrenda, surrounded by candles, fl owers and photos of the departed. But to pull o a piece in your fi ngers when it’s still warm from the oven is something else; the fi ne crumb of the interior is tender and fragrant with cinnamon, the browned crust and cinnamon add a slight, nutty bitterness against the sugar. It makes sense to welcome back the spirits of loved ones who’ve died with something so soft and familiar, with nourishing bread and the memory of sweetness.

Cooling pan de muerto loaves crossed with “bones.”

Photo by Jennifer Fumiko Cahill

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Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the arts and features editor at the Journal. Reach her at 442-1400, extension 320, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @JFumikoCahill.