What ‘dough’ you get when you combine several hundred kilograms of sugar, flour and yeast with a few hundred litres of milk and over ten thousand eggs? A record-breaking bread, is what.
The Christian festival of Epiphany (also known as Three Kings’ Day), marking the biblical three kings’ visit to baby Jesus, was celebrated by the Yucatecan city of Tizimin in Mexico by breaking the Guinness World Record for the longest line of breads.
Over 1,000 people at several local bakeries worked together to cook up an enormous amount of rosca de reyes – Three Kings Bread – and arrange it in a line measuring 9,974 feet long – that’s just over 3,000 metres.
Making the bread required two tonnes of flour, 13,000 eggs, 50kg of yeast, 50kg of salt, 625kg of sugar, 625 litres of milk, 1,500 pieces of candied fruit and 19,000 tiny baby Jesus figurines. Mexican tradition requires anyone that finds a baby Jesus must make tamales (a traditional Mexican dish made with a corn dough mixture) for friends on family on Candlemas Day – 2nd February.
The measuring process took over five hours, and hundreds were present when the bread was finally served – which is a requirement for obtaining a record.
Tizimin is the latest in a line of cities to break the record. Clearly a trend, previous record holders have been:
- In 2019, the city of Saltillo, Mexico, cooked up a rosco de reyes of 6,776 feet (2065metres) long.
- In 2011, Châtel-St-Denis, Switzerland had a rosco de reyes that measured 3192 feet (973.24metres) long.
- In 2010, Haydel’s Bakery (USA) at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana, US made a rosco de reyes that measured 2,643 feet (805metres) and completely circled the Superdome.
- In 2001, the initial record was set by Fiesta Mart supermarket in Houston, US, with a rosco de reyes that weighed over 3,000-pounds (1360kg).
