Pandoro

A Veronese star-moulded sweet bread with no fruit in it at all.

Egg. Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains egg, dairy (butter).

Ingredients

• 600 g strong white flour
• 280 g butter, soft
• 6 eggs and 4 extra yolks
• 180 g caster sugar
• 12 g fresh yeast
• 1 vanilla pod, scraped
• zest of 1 lemon
• 8 g salt
• icing sugar, to finish

Method

1. Build it in three doughs over about 14 hours: a small starter of flour, yeast and water; then half the flour, eggs, sugar and a third of the butter; then the rest.
2. Let each stage double before adding the next. Rushing a stage gives a bread that will not hold the butter later.
3. THERE IS NO CANDIED PEEL AND NO RAISINS. That is the difference from panettone, and it is not a minor one — without fruit to interrupt it, the crumb is meant to come away in silky sheets, so the dough is far richer in butter and yolk instead.
4. Add the remaining butter a small piece at a time to the final dough, waiting until each is fully taken up. This takes 20 minutes and cannot be hurried.
5. Butter a tall eight-pointed star mould heavily and fill it one third full.
6. PROVE 6 TO 8 HOURS AT 26C, until the dough crowns just over the rim. This is the long one and it cannot be shortened with more yeast.
7. Bake at 160C for 50 minutes, covering the top if it darkens early.
8. Cool it IN the mould for 20 minutes, then turn it out point upwards and dust heavily with icing sugar.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Italy · All recipes