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.
Step 2
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.
Step 3
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.
Recipe Notes
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.