Thirteen colorful caritas (faces) etched on hardened corn masa look up at 48-year-old Sinecio Mecinas as he adds the finishing touches on the first batch of this season’s pan de muerto.
The smell of freshly baked, egg yolk-enriched dough is dense inside his cramped bakery, which is incorrectly labeled “Venice Bakery” on Google, but is really called “La Yalaltequita,” an homage to the small mountain town in Oaxaca’s Sierra Norte where he comes from.
Mecinas is crouched over, carefully drawing ornate designs on his pan de muerto. His colorful outlines on the human-shaped dough figurines resemble something between papel picado and huipiles; every design he makes is unique.
The bakery is a bonafide L.A. strip mall gem that sells tortillas made from nixtamal—they ranked high in Gustavo Arellano’s Tortilla Tournament—as well as traditional Oaxacan dishes, available through counter service. It also offers dozens of other varieties of pan dulce.