Panettone

A Milanese fruited sweet bread hung upside down to cool so the crumb survives.

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

Ingredients

• 600 g strong white flour
• 200 g butter, soft
• 5 egg yolks and 2 whole eggs
• 160 g caster sugar
• 200 g natural leaven, refreshed three times
• 200 g raisins, soaked and dried
• 120 g candied orange and citron peel, diced
• 1 vanilla pod, scraped
• zest of 1 orange
• 8 g salt

Method

1. Refresh the leaven three times in the day before mixing. A sluggish leaven cannot lift a dough this heavy with fruit and butter.
2. Make a first dough with half the flour, the leaven, some sugar, yolks and water, and let it triple — 10 to 12 hours.
3. Add the rest of the flour, sugar, eggs and the butter a piece at a time, then the vanilla, zest and salt.
4. FOLD THE FRUIT IN LAST AND BY HAND. Beaten in with the machine the peel tears the gluten you have spent two days building.
5. Shape round, drop into a paper panettone case, and prove 6 to 7 hours until the dough reaches the rim.
6. Cut a cross in the top, set a knob of butter in it, and bake at 165C for 50 minutes to an internal 94C.
7. NOW SKEWER IT THROUGH THE BASE AND HANG IT UPSIDE DOWN TO COOL, for at least 6 hours. This is the step everyone skips and it is not optional: the crumb is so open and so weak while hot that it collapses under its own weight if left standing, and you get a dense band across the bottom.

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