Well, I’m very sorry to hear of the untimely shedding of the panettone top in a prior year! The shedding of tears would be the appropriate yin to that yang.
As for my “spiking” accident, with the frequent refreshments of the starter, I didn’t really notice any “twang” in the final product. And as for the lamination, yes, the crumb was pretty good (I did notice the coil folds in the video and I reproduced that as well) but I might try it next time anyway as it can’t hurt. And experimenting with rise times might also be interesting - I’d love to get crumb approaching that of the masters, though I have friends who simply don’t understand my obsession with the elusive open crumb in general. While we disagree on the obsession, we agree that they simply don’t understand.
Happy 2020! Here’s to a new year, a new decade, new challenges, and new happy accidents!
Hi @annietran715,
Sorry, it looks like the link I provided in the Topping section of my guest blog piece might be broken. The glaze recipe I use was part of a panettone recipe by Gabriele Riva, as featured on an episode of the Martha Stewart Show. I only use the topping portion of his recipe for my panettone. Here is a link that appears to work (refer to ingredient list and step 7 of the instructions):
Just in case the link doesn’t work, here is the topping recipe:
40 g Blanched Almonds (or Almond Flour)
40 g Blanched Hazelnuts (or Hazelnut Flour)
70 g Swedish Pearl Sugar
60 g Cornstarch
60 g Egg Whites, room temperature (Use some of the pasteurized egg whites left over from separating the egg yolks for the second dough)
More Blanched Almonds for garnish
Confectioners’ Sugar for garnish
Place the almonds (or almond flour), the hazelnuts (or hazelnut flour), the Swedish pearl sugar and cornstarch in the bowl of a food processor, cover and process on high speed until the mixture is powdery. With the mixer running, slowly drizzle in the egg whites until mixed well. Transfer the topping to a disposable pastry bag. When ready to top the panettone, cut a ¼ inch opening in the bottom of the pastry bag. Note that the topping should be at room temperature to properly adhere to the panettone. And make sure to leave 1" - 1.5" space around the edge of the paper mold free of the glaze when you are piping it or else it will slide off the edge of the muffin top when it rises in the oven. After piping the glaze, decorate with blanched almonds and Swedish pearl sugar and then dust with some powdered sugar. Then into the oven!
Hello Dan,
First off thank you for the wonderfully detailed recipe! I am having an issue where my first dough isn’t rising as it should, it has barely risen 10% in the last 12 hours. I often have this issue when making enriched dough’s with a starter, and I’m not sure if I am doing something wrong. I followed your steps on maintaining the 50% hydration starter and it was tripling in 8 hrs at 20C (so I am doubling all of your rising times to account). Possibly I need a proofing box because my house is too cold? Any tips appreciated!
Hi @generosoj, I think that temperature may be the problem. If your starter triples in 8 hours at 20C, it may actually triple in volume in 4 hrs if you kept it at 80F/27C for a few days. As a general rule, enriched doughs rise more slowly than lean doughs and this recipe is pretty highly enriched! At 20C, I am not sure how long it would take to triple in volume. And then when it eventually did, I would also worry that the dough might get noticeably acidic after a really extended proofing time. Normally I don’t taste any sourdough twang in my panettone when proofed for the times in the ranges that I listed.
You could increase the starter amount in the first dough, but then I would worry about that sourdough twang again. I have never tried it for that reason.
Perhaps you could find a warm spot, like in an oven with the oven light turned ON (oven turned OFF of course. ) My oven has two 40W light bulbs and it actually gets a bit too hot with the door closed (upper 90’sF), but with the door propped open just the right amount, it could work. You can place a remote read oven thermometer in the oven to monitor the temperature. Another thing I have done in the past is to put a small incandescent clip-on reading lamp in a cooler large enough to hold the baking sheet with the loaded panettone molds, making sure that the lamp cannot touch anything flammable. I then plug the lamp into a terrarium heater controller (purchased online), place its temperature sensor in the cooler, set the desired temperature and close the lid. The heater controller then turns the light on and off to maintain the desired temperature with the light bulb as the heat source. Also, there is a new heating mat specifically for bread proofing over in the Breadtopia Store called the Raisenne Dough Riser, which might work.
Hope this helps! Good luck with your panettone baking!
Hi hi, thank you so much for sharing a perfect recipe. This weekend is my 3rd bake for my friends and co workers. So far, all of them loved it. I have a couple of clarifications:
The general comment from friends and co workers is that whenever they peel off the paper mould, the skin of the bread will tend to stick to the paper. Is it because its under baked? I never have this problem when i bought the commercial ones from the stores.
I noticed that the panettone, after taken out of the oven and after my testing on the internal temperature, it tends to collapse within a bit, especially the centre area where I score and the 4 flaps are cut and a small block of butter was placed. Is there a way to improve this?
Despite my starter works extremely well after a series of refreshers the day before I started, I couldn’t achieve the beautiful mushroom dome after the bake. I’m suspecting if it is because I didn’t did the final rise long enough. My kitchen is consistently at 83/84F and the dough will take around 6hrs to reach an inch below the top of the mould at the edges. Usually, at this time, I will start preparing to bake instead of waiting for it to reach 0.5 inch. Could this be the reason?
Thanks, Looking forward to your advice and i can’t wait to start baking again next weekend.
Hi @alonewitheverybody! I am so glad that you liked the recipe and were not intimidated by the lengthy instructions. And I’m impressed that you have already baked 3 batches this season, given that each batch takes 2 days! Home-baked panettone do make great gifts though. Last year I baked 17 large panettone and 18 cupcake-sized ones to give as gifts, to bring to holiday parties and TO EAT! . I am currently in the middle of my second bake of the season (baking later tonight). I never get tired of the wonderful aromas wafting through the kitchen while mixing and baking this recipe. It’s intoxicating! Now onto your questions.
I also sometimes have problems getting the panettone to release cleanly from the paper molds. That said, my first batch last week did release easier from the paper molds. I baked these a bit past the 201F internal temperature point, so who knows, maybe baking them a bit longer would help them release easier. However, I prefer not to let the crust get too dark because I feel it imparts a slightly scorched flavor and I also feel it adversely impacts the citrus fragrance and flavor. If it comes down to a choice between ease of release and optimal flavor, I’ll opt for the flavor every time! Of course you could just grease the inside of the molds with some butter before you drop in the dough to help them release easier. That might solve the problem.
Panettone is part bread, part cake and part souffle. Any significant shock, whether mechanical or thermal, can cause them to fall. I once accidentally slammed the oven door after checking at the end of a bake and to my horror, all the panettone started falling! Therefore, I am very careful in the kitchen when baking panettone. I leave the pan with the panettone in the oven and use a remote read oven thermometer to check the internal temperature (the kind with a temperature probe on a long wire that plugs into the main unit). I insert the temperature probe into the center of one of the loaves about 5 minutes before I expect them to be done and carefully close the oven door. When they hit 201F, I carefully remove them from the oven and get them inverted ASAP before they start to fall. (I pre-load 12 inch wooden skewers into the molds before adding the dough so I can invert them immediately after they come out of the oven.)
Your kitchen temp sounds fine so I don’t think that’s a problem. I let my panettone final proof until they are around a half inch from the top, so I think your instincts are spot on. By all means, give that a try. That allows the aveoli to get a bit larger so that when they hit the hot oven, there is additional expansion which results in the nice muffin top. However, I wouldn’t go much further than a half inch from the top because if you let it rise any higher, the muffin top will try to start sliding off to one side or another. Don’t ask me how I know that.
Hope this helps! Now it’s time for me to blanch some almonds that I’ll use to decorate the batch of panettone that I have final proofing as I am writing this.
Happy Baking!
Here are the results from yesterday’s bake. In the recipe I posted last year in my blog piece, I mentioned that I had reduced the amount of water added at the end of the second dough listed in Massari’s original recipe, because I was too afraid to add water to a dough that was already so soft. Well, after making a lot of Ciabatta Polesana this past Summer at 98% hydration with the same high gluten flour, my comfort level working with really soft doughs has improved significantly. So I decided to add the extra water from Massari’s original recipe. The dough was ultra soft but the gluten was really well developed so I had no problems with the “pirlatura” to form the taught dough balls in the pre-shaping and shaping steps. The oven rise was pretty spectacular and the crumb is even more open than from my previous efforts. And it was quite yummy as well, since I augmented the citrus element by adding the zest of one Mandarine orange to the original aromatic blend including lemon, orange and vanilla.
And as a result of a truly inspired suggestion by @Fermentada Melissa, I made a batch of Torrone with some of the egg whites left over from the panettone. I have very fond memories of getting little individually boxed Torrone in my Christmas stocking from my Italian grandparents. In case you did not know, Torrone is an Italian nougat treat that is flavored with honey, vanilla and orange or lemon zest, along with lots of roasted nuts. This batch includes almonds, hazelnuts and pistachios. And it has an edible wafer on the top and bottom to keep it from sticking to everything. It is pretty yummy and as I gobble it up, it brings me back to those happy Holidays celebrating with my grandparents!
Wow that is all so delicious looking! That crumb is so open and fluffy. Good for you on getting comfortable that high hydration.
For the torrone, did you use the Chef John / Allrecipes recipe? That’s what I used. I’m pretty abysmal at stirring patiently for long periods of time, but I was still happy with the outcome. I did have a note to try to make it a touch less sweet next time.
Yup, I used the Chef John recipe, but I tried to substitute some of my orange syrup for some of the honey and I don’t think the sugar in the recipe ever dissolved completely. Could be that my substitution was the culprit. And the recipe called for another 3 TBSP of sugar but never said when to add it. Fortunately, one of the comments below the recipe called out the omission and said it should be added to the whipped egg whites after achieving soft peaks. That said, it still came out pretty good. I agree about the sweetness though. Later today I am going to try this recipe instead: How to Make Italian Torrone at Home - La Cucina Italiana
I just received my order of shelled, roasted, unsalted pistachios, so I am ready to rock and roll! Just think of all the muscles I’ll have after stirring for over an hour!
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Strong torrone forearms here we come, and powerful fingers from squirting blanched almonds out of their skins
Thanks for sharing that other recipe. I’ll try that one this year. Luckily my local Trader Joes carries shelled, roasted, unsalted pistachios.
The orange syrup…from candying your peels? I have a jar in my basement refrigerator from 2019 still lol.
Hi Dan, thank you so much for the advice. Appreciate the sharing. I will try again this weekend and see what happens. When you mentioned that you have baked cupcake size panettone, may I know what’s the weight of the dough?
The small molds I got are intended for 90g of dough. That said, I put 90g of dough in them for my recent bake and the mushroom tops were quite large. In the past I have put anywhere from 50g on up to 90g, depending on how much dough I have after filling the large molds.
BTW, I tried the other torrone recipe and my attempt didn’t go so well. I had a couple issues (comedy of errors ). Not sure I got a good temp reading off my candy thermometer since it really should have been submerged further in the sugar syrup but there just wasn’t enough syrup. (To be fair, I don’t have any experience with making candy.) Also, I was using up pasteurized egg whites which took a fair amount of time to whip up, even though I added cream of tartar. By the time I got stiff peaks, the sugar syrup seized and I had to I start the syrup over again. Then by the time I added the second batch of sugar syrup, I think the egg whites and honey syrup had cooled down considerably. The torrone did thicken up somewhat so I added the nuts, but then it never set up fully after it cooled. I’ll probably go back to the Chef John recipe.
Oh that’s awful and hilarious at the same time I appreciate the torrone report. If I try that recipe, I’ll use a small deep pot for the sugar syrup, and unpasteurized eggs, and maybe get the stiff peaks ready and set aside before starting the two syrups. So risky, though I’m sure delicious if not giftable. I just raced thru Trader Joes late last night and, of course, forgot to grab pistachios
It’s a great way to get a nice dough ball with a taught skin!
). Not sure I got a good temp reading off my candy thermometer since it really should have been submerged further in the sugar syrup but there just wasn’t enough syrup. (To be fair, I don’t have any experience with making candy.) Also, I was using up pasteurized egg whites which took a fair amount of time to whip up, even though I added cream of tartar. By the time I got stiff peaks, the sugar syrup seized and I had to I start the syrup over again. Then by the time I added the second batch of sugar syrup, I think the egg whites and honey syrup had cooled down considerably. The torrone did thicken up somewhat so I added the nuts, but then it never set up fully after it cooled. I’ll probably go back to the Chef John recipe.
I appreciate the torrone report. If I try that recipe, I’ll use a small deep pot for the sugar syrup, and unpasteurized eggs, and maybe get the stiff peaks ready and set aside before starting the two syrups. So risky, though I’m sure delicious if not giftable. I just raced thru Trader Joes late last night and, of course, forgot to grab pistachios 