Pan de Molde Pan de Muerte 

A Funeral Pod Made of Bread

2025 | IED Bilbao, Master in Food Design | Project under the guidance and inspiration of food artist & designer Elsa Yranzo

 

Bread is more than food—it is ritual, survival, and history. But in its industrialized form, pan de molde (sliced bread) has lost all traces of its original significance. Pan de Muerte reimagines it not as nourishment, but as a burial material, creating a funeral pod made entirely from white bread. Through speculative design, this project questions the industrialization of food, the human obsession with preservation, and the inescapable cycle of life and death.

Concept & Inspiration:

Throughout history, bread has been sacred. The Egyptians placed bread in tombs to sustain the dead in the afterlife. In Christianity, it becomes the body of Christ, a symbol of sacrifice and eternal life. But today, the mass-produced pan de molde is a hollow imitation of what bread once was—stripped of nutrients, chemically preserved, and designed for efficiency rather than sustenance.

At the same time, modern burial practices reflect this detachment from nature. Bodies are embalmed, sealed in wood or concrete, resisting decomposition as if death itself could be postponed. This project materializes the absurdity of both phenomena: a coffin made from the very bread that has been engineered to last beyond its natural time.

Shocking Numbers:

  • The average person consumes 20,000 slices (1,360 kg) of bread in a lifetime—enough to build two entire bread coffins.

  • In Spain, this number is even higher, reaching 2,188 kg of bread per person.

  • The funeral industry is one of the most environmentally damaging, using:

    • 827,000 gallons of formaldehyde per year for embalming bodies.

    • Millions of trees for coffin production.

    • Concrete tombs and headstones, which contribute significantly to carbon emissions.

By transforming a hyper-industrialized food product into a burial material, this project exposes the excess, waste, and contradictions in how we treat both life and death.

Process & Materials:

  • Material Research: Studying the structural properties of pan de molde, exploring compression, preservation, and biodegradability.

  • Cultural & Historical Analysis: Investigating bread’s significance in funerary traditions and its transformation through industrialization.

  • Design Exploration: Moving away from the rigid, rectangular form of industrial bread, the funeral pod takes on a softer, organic shape, referencing cocoons, eggs, and natural enclosures.

Outcome & Reflection:

Pan de Muerte is not a practical alternative to traditional burials—it is a question in material form. It forces us to reflect on how we consume, preserve, and dispose of both food and bodies. It highlights the contradictions in how we treat life and death: bread that doesn’t decay, bodies that resist decomposition, a society that stretches time but cannot escape it.

Ultimately, this project serves as a poetic and provocative critique of modern preservation, closing the loop between what we eat and how we return to the earth.

Project developed under the guidance of Elsa Yranzo, food artist and designer.

These prototype images were envisioned and brought to life through Midjourney AI, merging human intention with machine-generated imagination to explore speculative design and material storytelling.