At one Albertville bakery, shelves are stocked with loaves of “bread of the dead” prepared for the Day of the Dead.

This special bread, pan de muerto, plays an important role in the celebration of the Day of the Dead.

"Normally this bread is made all year round if someone comes and orders it, but the traditional period begins from the first or second week of October where people begin to follow tradition and is in full swing on the first and second day of November of each year," said Eduardo Venegas, the manager of the Guelaguetza Bakery in Albertville.

Venegas says that although the bread is baked all year round, during the holiday period, it is decorated specially with a figurine representing the soul.

"The figurine comes to manifest itself at this time as a tradition of the Day of the Dead," Venegas said.

The bread can be designed in different ways. Venegas explains that a more traditional bread has a round base to represent the cycle of life and death, with narrow strips throughout as bones and a circle representing a skull on top.

During the Mexican celebration, this special bread is laid out on the home altar, or ofrenda, to welcome the dead home.

"It is full of offerings of different kinds, we can find offerings of flowers, of drinks, of clothes, perhaps clothes that the deceased once liked, with valuable objects, with aromatic herbs and with some foods that the deceased preferred in this case, inside the food is where the tradition of bread of the dead fits," Venegas said.

Guelaguetza Bakery has an additional location in Kilpatrick that also serves pan de muerto.