Pan de Muerto

Yay!
It smells soooo good.
I can't eat it, though.
I have to bring it to Spanish class tomorrow if I want those extra credit points.
-shiftyeyes-

In case you were wondering, "Pan de Muerto" means "Bread of Dead" (or just Dead Bread). No, it's not emo bread. (Hahah, that's a funny thought.) It's bread used to honor the dead. Halloween, except...not-candified. That's depressing.
Anyways, here's my baking story...

So first, my mom was in a...very bad mood today and wouldn't tell me where the yeast was. So I basically flipped out the pantry before she gave in and told me it was in the refrigerator. Once there, I flipped that out too until I found it (finally!) on the door.
Unfortunately, it was in a jar.
And, dundundun, the recipe called for "one packet active yeast".
Horror of horrors! What was I to do?
At first I thought I'd just put in 1 serving, but then I read small text (do you see the importance of small text?) and it says that 2.25 teaspoons is equal to one packet.
Ah. The beauty of small red text.
Anyways, I melted butter in milk and put yeast in warm water and added an egg and a half (one white out for later) and all that good stuff, and mixed in 2.25 (dunno what's up with this number) cups of flour, stirred, knead, blahblahblah.
Then I had to wait TWO HOURS for the stupid thing to rise.
Isn't that retarded?
Except I left for my violin lesson when it reached the 1.5 hour mark, and came back home after dinner, so it rose for about 4 hours.
It was rather...large...at that point.
So I kneaded (hahah, is that even a word?) it again, and it shrunk. A lot.
And I cut it up, and braided three of the sections and looped them around.
It looked very pretty.
Very professional.
Like I could sell it in a bakery.
(Keep in mind it was raw at that point.)
Then I made two 'bones' (dunno, I tried to make them bone-shaped but they ended up looking like buns) and stuck them on top.
Hey, the recipe says to do that--don't blame me.
After all that braiding and blahblahblah, it had to rise again. (Ridiculous, I totally agree).
At least it was only 30 minutes, so that wasn't too terrible.
I went to play piano, and when I was done practicing, it was all poofed up!
Except all pretty-shaped and happy.
Then I brushed on that egg white that I didn't put in (except there's like, 3/4 of an egg white left, sitting in my refrigerador right now) and scattered lots of cinnamon and sugar all over it.
At that point, the whole thing was basically a very puffy circle with a diameter about the length of my hand.
That's...I dunno. 7 inches? 6? Bigger than Anita's and Pei's hands, at least. (lol!)
Then I baked it! It smelled really bad, like yeast, at first.
But then the cinnamon came out and was very happy-making.
I didn't look at it for 35 minutes.
Then when I took it out, it had doubled in size!
Seriously!
It was like, insane.
It was about two-hands in diameter, and twice as thick.
(Nevermind, it quadrupled in size. Ignore my lame math skills.)
It was veryvery frightening.
It was like, bigger than my head.
And the pretty pattern died, 'cause it kinda just all bloated together and made criss-cross lines instead of the happy in-out weave of before.
-sigh-
Oh well.

Story of my life!
:D
Baking it was fun.