The Bread Babies’ Festival and Month
Days before the dates, the preparation begins for the fairs and festivals in which this food will be offered. Cuzco’s community ovens and bakeries begin the preparations by making up bread babies which are very popular and much loved by Cuzco’s people. They cannot be missing from any table or home in the city.
The sale of bread babies is carried out in the different plazas of the city, such the Plaza San Francisco, the San Jeronimo, the San Sebastian, and in the district of Oropesa also known as the district of bread. Fairs and festivals are organized for those places and in them you can enjoy the different decorations each bakery creates for their bread and the amazing flavors of the bread.
For males you have the bread horse while for women the bakers make up bread babies. On these days children in Cuzco are very content because most of the bread babies and horses are made for them, though grown ups love them too.
Another of our traditions is the baptism of the bread babies to which many people go. They begin with the organization of people to carry out the event as friend, work mates, family, etc. They order bread babies from nearby ovens in order to have them ready for the baptism.
Once ready, they carry out a mass where all the friends of the organizers attend. They persons named as godparents for the bread baby also attend. Once the mass is over the padrinos, godparents, slice the bread and serve it up along with hot chocolate or ponche for all those who attended.
In this way the event ends. Throughout the month of November people will do baptisms of bread babies. Of course the bread continues to be for sale throughout the month. People will buy bread babies to enjoy on their table with their family members.
Thanx for a lovely site and blog! And recipes! Yesterday my thoughts were back in Peru for the celebration of Día de los Muertos. I visited Peru in 2003, and then I was impressed by the celebration. I loved the TV broadcasts from diffferent cemetarys all over the country, so you could take part of celebration in different places. Yesterday a popular TV-channel here in Sweden started to publish pictures from people all over Sweden celebrating their dead, so I hope this will be a tradition here in Sweden too. /Gunilla, swedish foodwriter
Thank you, Gunilla and greetings to all the wonderful people of Sweden.