Adventures with panettone

While we're in Italy, I have been on a mission to attempt making all sorts of traditional Italian dishes--especially baked goods. Most of our experiments have actually ended up involving pasta (as you may have gathered from previous posts), but there has been some branching out to things like schiacciata con uva. Naturally last year at Christmas time we had to attempt panettone (in spite of the small size of our kitchen). The first task, of course, was to find a recipe. Google will pop up all kinds of things when you search for Panettone, but I wanted to make sure I used a good and "authentic" recipe, so I asked Antonella at Buca del vino for advice (as we usually do when experimenting with Italian food). Marco said making panettone would be impossible (obviously, I had to interpret this response as a challenge), but Antonella sent me to A casa di ross, an Italian food blog full of many excellent recipes--both traditional and non.

Turns out that panettone is usually made with lievito madre (a natural starter). Supposedly natural starters shouldn't be all that hard to get going. In theory you just combine flour and water and then babysit it for a few days while it collects natural yeast and ferments happily. But I've never had any luck at all geting one started--the few times I've tried the result has been a rather foul bowl of stinky (in a bad way) floury goo. And, it also turns out that all the Italian food blogs seem to suggest that one shouldn't try to make a lievito madre one's self, one should get someone to give you a piece of their well-developed starter. Clearly no one was going to supply me with starter, so I opted to use the recipe that calls for dry active yeast (lievito di birra)--not nearly as adventurous for sure, but much more likely to be successful. Or so I thought. The problem was that when I pulled out the yeast and flour and got working, I was immediately skeptical about the quantity of yeast the recipe called for--50 grams (or about 3 tablespoons), in other words way way way more than I usually use for bread. Now, panettone is supposed to be light and fluffy, but I didn't want it to taste of nothing but yeast (and I didn't have anything big enough to allow for quite as much rising as was likely to happen with that much yeast). So I reduced the amount to about 1 table spoon. The panettone came out tasting quite good, but it was definitely too dense in the end. Result: determination to try again the following year with a bit more yeast.

Which brings us to this year's attempt. Like last year, I made a point of starting out with good ingredients (usually for bread I just use the cheapest flour I can find, but if one is going through all the effort to make panettone, one might as well not be cheap about it). Armed with butter from Alto Adige, organic flour from the Coop, and candied citrus peels we found at the antique market (no, the peals themselves weren't antiques) in piazza Santo Spirito, I set out on panettone attempt #2. Even using dry active yeast, panettone is a long long process involving several rounds of rising and takes the better part of a day from start to finish. Mostly, it isn't all that tricky (if you're used to making bread), it's just time consuming. The complication comes in at the final stage--when the panettone comes out of the oven. Because the dough is full of heavy candied fruit, the panettone must be hung upside down to cool so that it doesn't fall, and this is easier said than done. Last year we managed without disaster, but this year the main panettone was a bit larger due to the size of pot available in our new apartment. Ideally one would use a pre-made panettone mould and thus avoid these kinds of inconsistencies and odd effects resulting from creative jury-rigging, but it turns out at the no one in Italy actually makes panettone themselves so it is impossible to buy the traditional paper panettone moulds. Last year I went to about 5 different kitchen shops, and everyone looked at me like I had three heads when I asked if they carried panettone moulds. The solution to not having a proper mould is finding containers that seem vaguely appropriately shaped and lining them with parchment paper. Which we did. One baby panettone got cooked in a container that once housed Mozart balls (chocolate candies). My strategic error was deciding to put the remaining panettone dough into the pasta pot--which created a very large, very very heavy panettone. Problem with very large panettone: 1) takes *forever* to cook 2) is too heavy to hang upside down without panettone disaster.

And so the baby panettone we managed to hang without too much trouble (other than the minor difficulty of getting it out of its cooking tin). The big panettone, however, was less lucky. It was so heavy that I figured we better stick several skewers through (the wooden skewers I had available for use were pretty flimsy). Unfortunately, the several skewers severed off the bottom. Panettone fail. Not only was it now in two pieces (and impossible to hang properly), the newly opened inside didn't look all that cooked. So we stuck the two pieces back in the pasta pot and ended up cooking it for about another hour (perhaps excessive, but it was hard to tell). Of course, once it came out of the oven for good we weren't going to be able to hang it upside down, so we put it on a cooling rack on its side and hoped for the best. Bad news is that the hanging step really is quite important. As I had feared when we cut into it the next day, we discovered that our panettone had fallen in the middle. If it hadn't been severed in half, it would probably have been nice and fluffy (apparently the baby panettone which we gave to the folks at Buca del vino came out well). The poor big panettone though was left with an over-cooked crust, a large hole between the crust and the rest of the dough, and a very dense bottom half. The flavor was good, but the texture was definitely not right.

So we'll have to try again next year! Plan for improvement--order panettone moulds ahead of time on the internet so as to make panettone of reasonable size and also to avoid the step of turning panettone out of pot, which encourages falling.

Panettone recipe, translated (in some places loosely) from the Italian:

Ingredients for a panettone of about 1 kilo and 250 grams:

500 gr. flour (type OO), 150 grams manitoba flour, 50 grams dry active yeast proofed in a bit of warm milk with a spoon of sugar (I used 2 table spoons instead of 3, but actually I think I will try the full amount next year...maybe it isn't as insane as it seems), 150 grams sugar, 4 egg yolks and 1 full egg, seeds from ½ vanilla bean, zest from one orange and one lemon, 150 grams butter, 180 grams raisins, 100 grams candied orange peel, 100 grams candied cedro (citron fruit) peal.

First rising: proof the yeast in a bit of warm milk with a spoon of sugar (by "a bit" I assume it means at least a cup and probably more because the flour needs to be well hydrated to make the starter). Add 100 g flour (type 00). Leave to rise, covered, in warm oven (make sure the oven is turend off!) for about an hour.

Second rising: Pull the starter out of the oven, add 150 g flour (type 00), 50 g manitoba flour, and about 10 spoons of warm milk along with about 3 spoons of sugar. Mix together and leave to rise for about 3 hours.

While dough is rising: soak raisins for at least an hour (we soaked ours in zibibbo, a dessert wine from Sicily). In theory when they are hydrated you should pour off the liquid and dry the raisins. I justed dumped the whole bowl--liquid and all--into the dough because a bit of zibibbo makes the panettone extra yummy. At this point also cut the candied citrus peels.

About ½ hour before the dough is done rising, prepare a syrup. To do this, place a double boiler over moderate heat, add 100 g of sugar and a small amount of water. Form syrup. Remove from heat (but leave double boiler assembled), and beat in the egg yolks and whole egg (one at a time) until whipped.

Take the dough out of the oven, add 200 g flour (type 00) and 150 g manitoba flour, the vanilla seeds, the orange and lemon zest, and then the syrup mixture and the butter (alternating between the two). Kneed well....very well. Place in bowl to rise for a few hours (it should double in bulk).

When the dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out on to the counter and kneed for another 5 minutes, then put into the moulds (or whatever you’re using) and slice a cross in the top (and put a pat on butter on top if you desire, I didn’t). Then leave to rise again.

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees celsius and put a bowl of water in the bottom. When the dough has risen, put the panettone in the oven. After 12-15 minutes (not before), lower the heat to 200 degrees, and then after another five lower it again to 180. In theory, if you have reasonable sized panettone, it should cook for about 40-45 minutes.

When the panettone is done, remove it from the oven and hang upside down (however you can make it work is fine--running skewers through it is a good idea so long as you don’t sever it in half) over night to cool.

**disclaimer about quantities in the recipe: as with all Italian recipes, certain aspects of this one are a bit imprecise—most notably the amount of liquid it calls for. You just have to experiment to see how much milk seems appropriate. The dough should be fairly moist but not so moist that it is just goo.