October 19, 2022 - A Book & A Recipe

Welcome back, readers and eaters! 

We're excited to share a pretty spoooky recipe with you this October. Brooke County Libraries is featuring the recipe for Pan de Muerto (Bread of the Dead) from A Catered Halloween by Isis Crawford. This fun cozy mystery is full of quirky characters and great food.

Ingredients-

Bread:

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup water

5 to 5 1/2 cups flour

2 (1/4 oz.) packages of active dry yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp whole aniseed

1/2 cup sugar

4 eggs

Glaze:

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup fresh orange juice

2 tbpn orange zest

Instructions-

1. Bring the sugar, juice, and orange zest to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat.

2. Boil for 2 minutes.

3. Set the glaze aside.

4. In a saucepan over medium flame, heat butter, milk, and water until warm to the touch. Do not boil.

5. Measure out 1.5 cups of the flour and set aside.

6. In a large mixing bowl, combine the 1.5 cups of flour, yeast, salt, aniseed, and sugar.

7. Beat the warm liquid until well combined.

8. Continue beating in flour until dough is soft but not sticky.

9. Knead the dough on the floured board until smooth and elastic.

10. Lightly grease a large bowl, place the dough inside, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place.

11. Let the dough double in bulk, probably 1.5 hours of time.

12. Punch the dough down and shape into loaves resembling skulls, skeletons, bones, etc.

13. Let loaves rise for an hour. Preheat oven to 350 F.

14. Bake the loaves for 40 minutes.

15. Remove from the oven and paint on the glaze with a pastry brush.

Sounds delicious, right? Such a fun Halloween treat that's not ALL sugar!

If you try out this recipe, be sure to let us know! We'd love to hear from you in the comments or in person, or on any of our social media pages.

Intrigued by the book? Check out our ebook copy!

A Catered Halloween - West Virginia Reads - OverDrive

As always, images and info are courtesy of WV Reads, Google, author webpages, and more.