“We’re about to bake the pan de muerto,” says Tamar Fasja Unikel, heading into the depths of the Hatchery, the vast East Garfield Park restaurant and food service incubator.
Fasja Unikel is half of Masa Madre, an artisanal bakery fusing Mexican and Jewish traditions. Pan de muerto, literally, “bread of the dead,” are sweet, pillowy round loafs, decorated with symbolic bones, that can be eaten plain, dipped in coffee or hot chocolate, or reverently placed along with marigolds and photos on an ofrenda, the altar honoring the memories of departed loved ones (both family and pets). Placing food there is an act of both love and sacrifice, since you don’t eat those offerings yourself. You mustn’t; it’s their food.
In kitchen D-119 waits her business partner, Elena Vázquez Felgueres. The two met about 10 years ago at Centro, an arts and fashion school in Mexico City. Both moved to Chicago with their spouses independently, then reconnected here and decided to go into business together.
Why not pursue fashion?
“Chicago is not a fashion-forward city, so we had to change gears,” says Fasja Unikel.
True enough. Chicago has always been a far greater source of food than fashion. More cow, less leather jacket.
Though the women’s training is subtly reflected in the unusual rose aprons they wear — crossing in the back, straps spaced wide, hanging from their shoulders instead of their necks.
“When we first started it was just two of us, we were baking long hours. The other aprons that go on our neck hurt a lot,” says Vázquez Felgueres. “We tried this shape and it’s very comfortable. You can wear it all day.”
Mexican and Jewish traditions mingle at Masa Madre bakery, as trays of pan de muerto and challah await packaging at the kitchen of Masa Madre, a “virtual” bakery whose products are delivered to outlets or picked up by customers. They hope to open a bricks-and-mortar bakery next year.
Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
They can and do, at least Wednesday through Friday, their baking days, which begin at 4 a.m. and run until orders go out about 11:30 a.m. They lead a team of four bakers, but are very hands-on, plucking finished breads from the oven, painting them with butter, handing them over to be doused in sugar.
Masa Madre is a “virtual” bakery — they work in a single rented space, a kitchen crammed with baking racks and tables and stacks of boxes. They have outlets and take orders for pick-up and delivery, but hope to open a bricks-and-mortar bakery in the West Loop next year.
Masa Madre means “mother dough.” They chose the name because back when they started in 2018, buying ingredients at Costco and baking at home, they focused on sourdough, with its venerated eternal starter.
“We evolved into making more yeasted breads,” says Fasja Unikel. “The name stuck. We really base our recipes and all of our culture through our mothers and grandmothers. It’s a homely, heritage-based cuisine, so we really like the name, something that really represents us.”
That already-important family takes on even more significance on the Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, which begins Tuesday. Many in this country may think of the two-day holiday, observed Nov. 1-2 every year, as a sort of Hispanic Halloween afterparty. But it’s actually a deeply felt, family-oriented festival built around reverence for relations rather than any ooo-scary view of mortality. A time when the barrier between the world of the living and the realm of the dead is thought to be thinner, more permeable, than it is the rest of the year. A day when your departed family members can reach out to you from the next world to express the love they still carry, and you can reach back toward them with the foods they enjoyed in life.
“In Mexico, instead of mourning, we celebrate their lives and remember them,” said Vázquez Felgueres. “My grandmother and mother would set up an altar at their home. My grandmother would make my grandfather’s favorite dish, enchiladas, serve them their favorite liquors. We believe on that day they come back and they enjoy it and they’re here with us.”
I suggest that Jewish cuisine is lacking in the spice department, particularly compared to Mexico’s. Fasja Unikel, who is Jewish, is having none of that.
“It depends what kind of Jewish cuisine you are talking about,” she says. “I come from a Syrian family, ashkenazi. There’s cardamom and there’s cinnamon. In Syrian cuisine there are lots of spices. Then add to it the Mexican, there are also chiles, cumin, all sorts of spice.”
“They match very well,” says Vázquez Felgueres, who calls herself and her business partner “a mix within ourselves.”
“My family is not Jewish,” says Vázquez Felgueres. “We’re Mexican. There are so many similarities between the Jewish culture and the Mexican. We’re both very close to our families. We’ll gather around food, definitely. Always grandmothers are the ones who create these banquets.”
That family sense is continued in today’s baking process. Three generations of women help prepare the baked goods.
While their Hisbiscus Za’atar Challah, served at a sabbath dinner at North Lawndale a few weeks ago, caught my attention, they also offer a regular challah, and the pan de muerto are by-the-book.
“It’s a very traditional pan de muerto,” says Fasja Unikel. “Sometimes we like to mix Jewish and Mexican pastries, but sometimes we like to bring over traditional Mexican bread we think we cannot find here. This year we really wanted to do something traditional. High quality, handmade pan de muerto — that something that’s hard to find in Chicago.”
Their philosophy is environmental awareness — compostable packaging, cage-free eggs — without a lot of elaborate production.
“Find the best quality, you don’t need to do much,” says Vázquez Felgueres. “The ingredient itself works for you. The za’atar that we use right now is made in Mexico City by Tamar’s husband’s grandmother. It’s a mix of seven spices.”
Of course, a supply chain that involves carrying spice over from Mexico is inherently problematic, and COVID doesn’t help.
”The za’atar we bring in whenever we go to Mexico or when our families come,” says Fasja Unikel. “We have a lot of supply issues.”
“We’ve had trouble with packaging,” agrees Vázquez Felgueres, such as the unusual recyclable parchment paper pans. “The loaf pans for babkas, we had a supplier we had in New York and they’re not supplying anymore. Now we have to have them shipped from Italy. Chocolate and cocoa powder have also been an issue.”
Babkas being the moist, dense, layered cake loaves topped with pistachios, or dried rose petals.
Another issue, I speculate, must be prying the correct recipe out of older women who have guarded them for generations.
“She keeps her recipes like they’re her most precious things,” Vázquez Felgueres says of her grandmother Oliva. “So if she knows that I want to make something for the bakery, she hesitates before giving me the recipe.”
And perhaps holds back a key ingredient or two? I suggest, having known a number of wary grandmothers in my time.
“I think she alters,” confesses Vázquez Felgueres.
Another challenge to overcome. Eventually conversation runs down, and I watch the two working in focused, companionable silence, Fasja Unikel removing pan de muertos from trays and putting them into bags, Vázquez Felgueres working on a laptop. An occasional buzzer announces, for instance, that the conchas — round sweet breads filled with cream — are ready to come out of the oven, crunchy on the outside, soft and delicious on the inside.
They sometimes disagree, they agree, but never argue. I can’t help but wonder how Chicago, a food far more than fashion town, will end up rewarding them. The attention that sometimes comes to those who work hard and are devoted to quality has already been nipping at the pair.
“Very strange,” says Fasja Unikel. “We’ve been recognized on the street.”
You can find out a lot more on their website, hellomasamadre.com. Yes, they sell the aprons, for $45, and beautiful challah covers handmade in Mexico by an impoverished Otomi woman.
What sets their products apart?
“The quality of the ingredients is number one,” she says. “But also we bake fresh. Everything that’s baked right now is going to be delivered today. So it’s very fresh. We only take pre-orders, so we only bake what has been ordered. Not a lot of waste, and everything gets fresh to the customer and sometimes, if they’re lucky, it’s still warm from the oven. People love that.”
Yes we do. Feliz día de los Muertos.
