Pan de muertos & more...2015 Edition

The other day I was off work early and had some errands to do on the west side of Chula Vista...

It was that time of the year...

late October when Mexican bakeries are making pan de muerto or the bread of the dead.
At La Concha, they had their bigger sized loaves of pan de muerto on display but no smaller ones. I was told that they would have them the next day. I noticed that their decorated sugar skull cookies were now wrapped. Last year, they were out in the open...

What I got that afternoon...a huge crisp round cinnamon/sugar crusted pastry for TC:

Some pieces broke off in transit, hence the whitish parts.

I also got something new, which was this slice of a rolledcake topped and filled with cajeta and nuts.



It was still delicious and moist the next day.

The other item I bought from La Concha was the empanada filled with spiced ground beef, peas and carrots. The golden brown and flaky crust was such a great afternoon snack.


Gone in sixty seconds it was.

My next stop was around the corner, Chico's.  Hell, since I was already out and about, I figured I would make the most of this afternoon and make my rounds.


They had a nice altar going on with a beautif black, orange and white sugar skull printed table cloth. On their outside window, there was a photo collage of deceased loved ones.

The two items I got here were this loaf of bread filled with cream cheese and sliced jalapenos.

This will be breakfast for the next day or two.

The other item was their pan de muerto. The total for both was $3 (I'm not sure if the bread was $2 or $1 or if each was $1.50).

The photo shoot at home.  Compared to the pan de muerto I would buy bought later at Gloria's, this was bigger in size and was coated only in regular white sugar.

The bread was orange flavored with a tiny hint of anise (but no seeds were present).

Next stop, my favorite panaderia, Moreliana. Readers of this blog probably know that I am nuts about this place, especially when they have my favorite pastries there...

Such as these...the coyotas de piloncillo. They are still only $1 each. I always like choosing the ones with the brown sugar oozing out. I noticed that they no longer crimp or flute the edges like they used to.

Golden brown bottom crust...mmmm!

The taquito de queso is still only .40! There was a whole tray of these on top of the counter.

They had such a wide variety of empanadas available (apple, pineapple, lemon, pumpkin, and cajeta to name a few). I stuck with this one, the empanada de kamote (sweet potato):

I loved the look of the rolled edges.

I was halfway done!  Gloria's was my next destination.

(photo from "Gloria's Bakery" post from October 2013)

Yes, they had them here...and only .79!

In their hot case, they had the filled breads. I wanted the picadillo but they were all out so I went with what I had the last time, the Machaca filled bolillo ($3)


It was hot and toasty when I got it but cooled down when I got home. Bert and I will be sharing this later.

Here is Gloria's pan de muerto with pink sugar. Last year I didn't see any pink ones but just the regular white sugared breads.


Here they are side by side - Gloria's and Chico's breads.

I'd only been here once, Gonzalez Panaderia (on Beyer Blvd)...

I wanted to try my luck to see if they had pan de muerto as well. You know, for "research" purposes. Sadly, there were none.

But on the brighter side, they had these filled breads for only $1.75. There are two kinds, cheese and jalapenos and pepperoni with jalapenos and cheese.


Like last time, I got the same thing! This smelled so good since it was still warm!

Since I was down in San Diego (not quite IB), I wanted to check out the old Save a Lot (which in the olden days used to be Alpha Beta then Albertson's).  It turned into Save a Lot several years ago, as seen in the photo below:

(photo from my "Save a Lot Market" post from October 2013)

Then the last weekend of September, we noticed the market's name was removed and covered with a temporary sign reading, "Su Mercado" ("your market" in Spanish, duh).

(photo taken on Sunday, September 28 this year)

As of the past two weeks, there is new actual signage.

The SD Reader even had a "hot off the press" article soon after the change happened:
"Save a lot no more - IB store changes name..." September 26, 2015

It seems that there were some health code violations and some other shady stuff happening. That's too bad. After weeks of speculating about the inside and if it changed, I went in today to find it was still the same. Everything is as it used to be, the layout is the same, te food court is still there along with the tortilla making area. No change within except for the name outside.

On a table near the front are their packaged pan de muerto breads (both sweet and not). Th3se are quite large and while only $2.99, I felt "breaded out" and didn't get it.

Tortilla area is still there, yay!

They didn't have any mini pan de muertos in their panaderia section. I remembered that their tiny version was the best I've had from all of the different panaderias I've tried in the South Bay.

The only two things I got from Su Mercado was a pineapple (need it for smoothies!) and their tstadas (which we used to eat my homemade eggplant dip). These are so light and crisp and I'm glad they still carry them.

My afternoon turned into a two hour marathon of driving around to six different Mexican bakeries (well, one was a market).  I still had some fun snacking in between.

If you are the industrious DIY type, you can try making the pan de muerto:

This was one of the shortest videos I could find in English. It seems so....time consuming to me but then again, I hate working with dough. I liked how she used orange zest, orange juice as well as orange blossom water.

Previous post on Pan De Muertos:
"The Return of Pan de Muertos" October 2014 (which was also the Previous visit to Chico's):

Previous visit to Moreliana:
July 2015

Previous visit to Gloria's
September 2015

Previous visit to Sav-a-Lot which is now Su Mercado
October 2013

Previous visit to Gonzalez Panaderia (on Beyer Blvd):
September 2015

Dia de los Muertos begins on Sunday, November 1st and ends Monday, the 2nd. Plan accordingly if you plan to get some bread. As a non-Mexican, I didn't grow up practicing this. I don't celebrate Dia de los Muertos but I appreciate the cultural tradition. It is similar to Filipinos  celebrating All Soul's Day in the Philippines. There are no sugar skulls or bread with bones on them but the deceased are remembered with prayers and with families gathering and praying at gravesites and churches (cemeteries in the Philippines are above ground like in New Orleans). It is more of a somber  occasion. Day of the Dead seems more "celebratory". Some of my Mexican friends (including La Ley who grew up in TJ) did not grow up eating this pan de muerto or putting up altars with sugar skulls and such. It seems much more popular now that ever before.

If you don't want to drive all the way down to Chula Vista, you can always check out Panchita's in Golden Hill or Barrio Logan (don't bother with the uber hipster North Park location) or Elidia's or Hilda's (which Mary has been to). I would hesitate getting the boxed breads because you don't really know how fresh they are and Cathy has seen workers at Northgate or some other supermarket switching out the expiration tags. No bueno. But yeah, this is the time to get pan de muerto for Day of the Dead.