For Christmas last year I made Stollen bread, and this year Panettone. Why Panettone? I see them all the time around Christmas time in our favorite Italian bakery. Usually packaged in a colorful festive box, they are stacked up in a tall pyramid by the entrance. I love sweet Christmas breads but this one somehow kept evading me.
A little while ago we were invited for a dinner by our neighbors. They are cute elderly Italian couple that I like a lot, and love to talk to. From late summer to early fall they spent lots of time in their garage that they virtually convert into an outdoors kitchen. There they make anything from tomato sauces, fruit preserves to wine. I like to stop by, commonly do some tasting, inquire about the recipes and exchange our life stories. We both seem to have a great love for good food and that alone easily becomes an inspiration for social gathering and exchange. Although they are in their early eighties they seem very vital and full of life.
After the dinner we were served Panettone. I had several pieces, and loved its refreshing, soft fruity taste. I had it with a tea (ha, ha yes not with espresso) and it was delightfully tasty. That is all the motivation I needed to get on a mission to make my own.
After much research I learned that Panettone is in fact one of the most difficult pastries to make. It is easy to bake a dense, sweet fruit cake but that is not Panettone. Delicate soft texture and airy crumb can be quite complex undertaking and in many instances the whole process may stretch over the course of several days. The longest recipe I ran into was over 70 hours!
Well great, the more challenging the better! I mentioned before that I don’t have a dough mixer and I like hand kneading. The dough talks to you when you knead, you can feel the transition phases, and enjoy its smell and touch. That gives the whole baking process a context and substance and in turn that is what makes it more enjoyable.
This recipe takes about an hour of persistent kneading hence at the end, feels like a really good work out. Overall the recipe takes two days to make. On the first day you make a starter, and on the following day complete the rest of the process, finishing with baking later in the evening.
My first Panettone turned out great! It has all the features one would expect from this delicate, sweet bread; medium crumb texture, it is gentle and airy with moderate sweetness.
The recipe has been adapted from “Moja mala kuhinja” channel.
| Prep Time | 1.5 hours |
| Cook Time | 55 minutes |
| Passive Time | 20 hours |
| Servings |
Panettone
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- 220 ml filtered water
- 400 g all purpose non bleached flour
- 6 g fresh yeast
- 80 g egg yolk whipped
- 100 g granulated sugar
- pinch sea salt
- 100 g unsalted butter tempered to room temeperature
- 20 g egg whipped
- 30 g all purpose non bleached flour
- 3 g fresh yeast
- 2 g sea salt
- 10 ml filtered water
- 40 g granulated sugar
- 40 g butter
- 1 whole organic orange zest
- 1 whole organic lemon zest
- 1 tbsp honey
- 1 vanilla bean scraped
- 80 g raisins dry
- 150 g candied orange peel
Ingredients
Step 1 - Initial dough at day 1 evening
Step 2
Step 3
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- Make this dough at the evening before the day you will bake your Panettone. Dissolve the fresh yeast in filtered water and mix together with flour in a medium size mixing bowl. When you make a compact dough ball, cover the mixing bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 12 hours.
- On the following day start with mixing whipped egg yolks with the dough. You can first whip egg yolks with handheld mixer until unified. Add little at the time to the dough, knead, and only after eggs are fully absorbed by the dough, add more. This can be done by using a standing mixer running at low speed, but it is quite doable by hand, as I did. It took me about 22 minutes of kneading to incorporate egg yolks into the dough. You have to knead until the dough is smooth and compact.
- Incorporate softened butter into the dough. Add also a little at a time and knead until butter is fully absorbed and the dough's consistency is uniform. It took me about 15 minutes to incorporate the butter by hand kneading.
- Repeat the same process with adding the mix of sugar and salt to the dough. It took me about 12 minutes to incorporate the sugar into the dough.
- Once the dough is smooth and silky, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 3 hours.
- In a medium size bowl, mix together: egg, filtered water, butter, sugar, honey, vanilla, lemon and orange zest. Dissolve fresh yeast into the mix.
- Whisk in flour and salt until fully incorporated.
- Add this mixture to rested dough and knead until it is fully integrated.
- Add raisins and candied orange peel to the dough and knead until everything is uniformly distributed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and leave for 1 hour at room temperature.
- Weigh 950 g of dough and put into 7" diameter Panettone baking mold. You can buy them or make your own, as I did.
- Cover the mold with plastic wrap and leave at room temperature for 3.5 to 4 hours.
- Brush the top of the Panettone with egg and with a sharp knife, cut a cross and add small chunk of butter in the middle of the cross.
- Bake in prewarmed oven at 160 ºC (320 ºF) for 55 minutes.
- Take the Panettone out of the oven and with two long bamboo skewers, pierce right through, close to the bottom. Make sure that both skewers were inserted at the same elevation. Flip Panattone upside down and leave it overnight supported between boxes or books to cool off. If you don't do this, your Panettone top will likely collapse.
- Serve cool, the following day.
- do follow the recipe carefully and don't try to short cut or speed up the process. It will not work and you will not obtain the right dough consistency which is crucial to bake a successful Panettone.
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