Doctor Wine’s Panettone

CHEF MATTEO GIUDICI

The decorations are already up and the Christmas season is upon us and so this year I decided to share with you my panettone recipe. I love making this panettone and last year I made one that was gobbled down by Doctor Wine’s staff when we met to exchange our holiday greetings.

What follows is the complete traditional recipe, the one using a natural yeast starter and all the necessary leavening agents. It is a recipe for people who, like me, want to put quality on their table and give this great, traditional Italian cake the time and effort it deserves. Since 2005, traditional panettone has had production regulations that establish all the characteristics it needs to have to be classified as a real traditional panettone. A ‘Panettone Tipico della Tradizone Artigiana Milanese’ must be made using natural yeasts, be kneaded twice and it has to rise three times, the last in it baking mold.

This is a complicated recipe that is carried out over three days but it is well-worth the effort.

For a single 1kg-panettone (using a paper mold 18cm wide and 12cm high):

Total ingredients for the whole process 

90g of natural yeast starter* that has been renewed three times, 130g sugar, 200g of Manitoba flour, 100g white flour, 55g milk, water, 8 medium egg yolks (134 g), 175g soft butter + some 20g for non-baking use, 3g soy lecithin, ½ vanilla pod, 5g fine salt, 15g honey, 1g beer yeast, 150g white Sultana raisins, 75g candied orange, 50g candied citron and 1 demitasse cup of Cognac to soften the raisins.

Day 1 (first kneading) 

Ingredients: 90g natural yeast starter, 80g sugar, 55g milk, 30g water, 175g Manitoba flour, 50g white four, 5 egg yolks, 100g soft butter, ½ vanilla pod, 3g soy lecithin and 1g beer yeast.

Morning : refresh the starter dough for the last time with 50g of natural yeast, 50g Manitoba flour an 25g of water. Let it rise until it doubles in size.

1st kneading 

Create a mound with the flour in a large bowl.

Dissolve the sugar in the milk and water, let it cool and blend with the 3 egg yolks, the seeds from the vanilla pod, the beer yeast and the lecithin. Pour 2/3 of the mixture into the flour and begin to mix together, Once the dough becomes soft add the remaining 1/3 of mixture and mix until it is all amalgamated.

Add the natural yeast and another 2 egg yolks, one at a time, and mix until it is nicely uniform.

Add the butter in three stages and then mix the dough for at least 30 minutes or until it dough is smooth and elastic.

N.B.: To keep the dough from sticking too much to your hands while kneading it, do not add flour but rub your hands and the bowl with butter.

Cover the bowl in plastic wrap and let the dough rise over night or until it has doubled or tripled in size. If necessary, in the morning help the dough rise further by putting it into an oven that has been slightly warmed to around 28°C by a pot of hot water.

Day 2 - (second kneading) 

Ingredients : 50g sugar, 50g white flour, 25g Manitoba flour, 25g water (if needed, I have never added it), 3 egg yolks, 75g soft butter, 15g honey, 5g fine salt, 150g Sultana raisins, 75g candied orange, 50g candied citron and 1 demitasse cup of Cognac to soften the raisins.

In a large bowl place the dough prepared the previous day and add the remaining flour and mixed in well.

Little by little, add in the egg yolks and honey and then the sugar and salt.

Add the butter a third at a time and amalgamate the dough.

Let the dough sit 30 minutes and then add the candied fruit and raisins that were previously softened first in hot water and then in the Cognac before being dried well.

Let the dough sit in a warm place for around an hour.

Line your hands and the bowl with butter. Shape the dough into a round form and place it in a paper mold so that it occupies around 1/3 of the space available. It is best to place the paper mold in a pan given that it is difficult to move it without deforming the shape.

Let the dough sit and rise in a cold oven over night or until the dough has risen to about 1cm from the top of the mold.

Day 3 

Once the dough has risen, take it out of the oven and preheat the oven to 180°C.

In the meantime, delicately cut a cross on the top of the dough with a razor blade and put a knob of butter in the middle.

Lower the oven temperature to 170°C and begin baking. After 10 minutes lower the temperature to 160°C.

The panettone should bake for around 60 to 80 minutes (depending on the condition of the oven) or, if you have a cooking thermometer, until its interior temperature reaches 93°C.

Once cooked, stick in two skewers from the top to about 2cm from the bottle and turn the panettone upside down and let it cool for 12 hours before wrapping it in a plastic cooking bag.

The panettone can easily be kept for 15-20 days in the bag in a place that is not too warm.

*If you do not have a natural yeast starter, it can be substituted with beer yeast using the indirect (Biga) method the day before taking the first steps for the panettone. Prepare the biga starter by kneading 100g of Manitoba flour with 50g of room-temperature water and 2-3g of beer yeast. Cut a cross on top and let it rise in a bowl covered in plastic wrap until it has at least doubled in size. This usually takes some 12 hours at room temperature or more than 24 hours in a refrigerator.

This way using a minimal amount of beer yeast you can have a dough that ages slowly and it results in a product very similar to a traditional panettone.

Wine to pair 

The rule is a sweet cake must be accompanied by a sweet wine and not with a sparkling one, which fine to drink as an aperitif for Christmas dinner.

However, tradition says panettone is perfectly paired with Moscato d’Asti whether it be still or sparkling.

A brief history of panettone 

Panettone is a traditional Milanese Christmas cake that is now on the table of Italian families at Christmas around the world. The cake is high in the Lombardy versions and low in the Piedmont one and various legends date its origin back to the 15th century. One of the legends is that falconer Ugo degli Atellani fell in love with the daughter of the baker Toni and got himself hired to work in his bakery. There he enriched the bread with delectable ingredients sparking the enthusiasm of customers and lifting the shop out of a sales slump. Another legend says its origin was more fortuitous. During the Christmas feast of Ludovico il Moro, the cook burnt the cake and the servant Toni, to help him out, gave him some dough that he had been saving for himself and which had been prepared using leftovers from the pantry. Once it was baked all the guests praised this cake and when asked what it was called, the cook replied that it was “iI pan del Toni” (Toni’s bread).

It is more likely that panettone was originally a large bread on which a cross was cut on the top before baking as a religious symbol at Christmas. The master of the house would then divided the bread-cake among the members of the family and it was consumed in front of a fire where an oak log burned (the ceremony of the log). A piece of the bread was then saved for the following Christmas as a symbol of good luck.

This Christmas bread was then enriched over time with other ingredient like butter, eggs, raisins and candied fruits until it became what we know today. During the Austrian occupation of Lombardy, panettone became the annual Christmas gift the governor of Milan would give to the Metternich prince, who became an avid consumer of the cake..