Glad to hear that the Italian websites will not be a problem for you. Since that is the case, you might enjoy looking at some panettone recipes from other Italian masters on the same Fables de Sucre website. Just do a Google search on “Fables de Sucre Panettone”. I have seen at least 3 others there. There is also an intriguing recipe on the Giallo Zafferano site (the site that hosts the Fables de Sucre blog) from Alfonso Pepe and that site includes an associated video of the process. In his recipe, he uses an entire mandarin orange, not just orange zest, to make his aromatic blend. (Link: https://ricette.giallozafferano.it/Panettone.html). You can also substitute oranges or lemons. Perhaps you could make some ahead of time with some fresh citrus and freeze it? It might work.
Also, as I mentioned in my earlier post, I think it was the high gluten flour that made the difference between a so-so panettone and one with a high domed top and a light, airy crumb. This past Holiday season I ran out of high gluten flour during my last bake, and used bread flour that I enriched with gluten powder to get the same protein content as my high gluten flour. It actually worked quite well. I created a spreadsheet calculator to make it easier to do the enrichment calculations, but I couldn’t attach it here since the formum only allows photo uploads. However if you or anyone else is interested, let me know and we’ll figure out how to share it. Maybe through Melissa?
I just came up with a workaround for the gluten enrichment spreadsheet sharing issue. I created a calculator that does the same thing on InstaCalc.com. Here is the link:
Just enter the amount of enriched flour you want, the desired % protein(gluten) of the enriched flour, the % protein of your flour and the % protein of your wheat gluten and the calculator will tell you how much flour to use and how much wheat gluten to use. Remember to enter the % protein numbers as percentages (number followed by ‘%’). If you don’t know the % protein, just divide the amount of protein per serving (that is listed on the flour package) by the serving size and use that number.
Dear anon66425146—I forgot to say thank you for your long piece about sweet dough and sweet starters and for the pictures of your babka. So, THANKS! I didn’t really know anything about sweet starters, but I am following your links (and those of others) and, if I ever get the problem of how to find a warm enough place for proofing solved, I’m off to the races.
Last summer I worked on doughnuts, which I had never made; but I was making cake doughnuts, not raised. But now, since I am working on wild yeast sweet doughs (in preparation for panettone), I am thinking that that is the project I’ll bring to the family cabin at the lake—where there are enough eaters to justify doughnuts.
Let me know what kind of fat you use for deep frying. I was just using Canola oil, but I went to a lecture a few months back about the pros and cons of various oils and animal fats and now I am at a loss. I am NOT going to fry doughnuts in olive oil, that’s certain!
Okay, with all this information, I am becoming more terrified! But I am going to work on the solid starter and try using it for hot cross buns for Easter.
By the way, we are at the height of the citrus season. It’s a good time to make your own candied orange peel. Here’s a recipe:
Candied Orange Peel (or other citrus fruit)
2 large oranges, 1/4 inch of top and bottom cut off
4 cups sugar, divided
3 cups water
Cut peel on each orange into 4 vertical segments. Remove each segment (including white pith) in 1 piece. Cut into 1/4-inch-wide strips. Cook in large pot of boiling water 15 minutes; drain, rinse, and drain again.
Bring 3 cups sugar and 3 cups water to boil in medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Add peel. Return to boil. Reduce heat; simmer until peel is very soft, about 45 minutes. Drain.
Toss peel and 1 cup sugar on rimmed baking sheet, separating strips. Lift peel from sugar; transfer to sheet of foil. Let stand until coating is dry, 1 to 2 days.
Saving candied peel in the freezer keeps it from drying out. Wrap it well to prevent freezer burn.
I’m using rice bran oil after a lot of reading … probably same as you heard at your lecture. Rice bran oil is what is used for tempura per my reading. I find it is milder and even more neutral than Canola and there is not the same “fry oil” odor. I think many use Peanut Oil. I haven’t used that and am not sure where it falls in the pro/con list.
Another wrinkle in the doughnut thing. End of the year, I had a toaster failure and ended up going back to a toaster oven. Mostly because of size, I selected a Cuisinart that is smaller and square AND has air fryer basket. And it turns out that both old fashioned doughnuts and the yeast raised will air fry! Additionally, the brioche dough freezes well. I live in a 1 human house hold and do not need to make a dozen doughnuts at a crack (although the fried doughnuts freeze and rewarm ok). I like the raised best made from the same dough I made for the Babka. I roll out the dough, cut doughnuts and freeze the raw doughnuts on a cookie sheet and then into a Ziploc when frozen. I have a 1.5 quart Staub enamel cast iron petit French oven and can “deep fry” 1 doughnut in that but most often, I air fry one. The air fry texture is not as light and airy as deep frying but it is good.
Sorry! I did not mean to overwhelm you with too much information! I personally enjoy looking at different panettone recipes to see the similarities and differences in ingredients, techniques and hydration levels, etc. However, I generally do this in the “off-season”. When it gets close to my first bake of the season, I just focus on one recipe.
Your idea of small steps is a good one. You can use your hot cross buns effort to help you get confident in managing your solid starter. In the months leading up to the holidays I would suggest going over the Fables de Sucre “Panettone fatto in casa” tutorial and the Panettone di Massari recipe and if you follow their recommendations, I am sure you’ll do fine!
It’s almost Easter and my efforts with sourdough Hot Cross Buns have been wildly successful—But I think I am going to start saying “Wild Yeast” instead of “Sourdough.” Using the very stiff starter recommended for Panettoni has had some interesting ramifications: none of my bread tastes particularly sour. Since I don’t really like the San Francisco style of sourdough bread, this is a great moment for me!
My recipe for HCBuns calls for 3/4 cup of sugar and half a pound of butter—not the vast amounts required for Panattone, but still significant. I was really pleased at how well they rose. It took longer than with commercial yeast, but the final results were, I think, lighter and more tender—not what you think of as your typical sourdough texture!
I used a combination of 1 tsp. ground cardomom (white, not green) and 1 tsp. ground allspice, instead of cinnamon, which is the standard spice used. Me, I am a little tired of cinnamon in everything. For the dried fruit inside, I used a combination of dried currents, cranberries and sultanas (white raisins), which I soaked with Marsala wine and water before I mixed the fruit into the dough. (I drank the soaking liquid afterwards. Pretty good.) The reason for this is that the currents were quite dried out, and I didn’t want them sucking water from the dough.
As you can see, I got lazy and didn’t make the crosses out of flour paste, like you should do with really authentic HCBuns. Instead, I made crosses out of frosting made from powdered sugar, orange juice and flavored with grated orange peel, which I piped on later. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product with the crosses in place and the buns disappeared almost immediately under my neices’ onslaught.
I feel that I am really getting the hang of using wild yeast in very fat and sweet doughs and I’m very optimistic that I am going to ace the Panettone challenge come Christmas. My next sweet dough/wild yeast project is going to be raised doughnuts. I’ll try to take better pictures.
In case anyone is curious about how to make the “authentic” crosses on Hot Cross Buns, you make a kind of batter out of water and flour (1/3 – 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup flour) and pipe the crosses onto the buns with it just before you bake them. For some reason, the buns brown during the baking process, but the crosses made of this paste stay white. After baking, you glaze the buns with a frosting made of 1/4 cup milk and 2 cups powdered sugar that has been lightly cooked—sort of like the frosting on a glazed doughnut. You can also make a similar glaze with powdered sugar, the zest of one orange and 1/4 cup of the juice of the same orange.
Thank you for this explanation!! I spent a LOT of time looking at recipes and finally chose this one. It uses the paste. Many recipes and I think many U.S. bakeries use frosting after the glaze. At any rate, I didn’t understand how this was supposed to work.
So far, I have a test bake of 4 buns: no cross or glaze.
I’m very happy with interior and taste! I used currants soaked in apple juice (your Marsala wine soak sounds wonderful!), cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove for spices.
Now for my main batch … my piping of the paste is horrible, we’ll see what happens in the bake ??
Liz, Well, they look delicious, but I am glad you started with a test batch for the “Authentic” crosses. I take it you used the plastic bag method of piping. I did that too, but I used a very flimsy ziplock bag and it exploded in the midst of one of my crosses. I guess I squeezed too hard. What a mess! Anyhow, my orange glaze crosses may not have been authentic, and some of them not very pretty (you can see why I didn’t get around to photographing them), but they tasted great.
Yes, used a zip log bag and made too large of a snip in the corner. And you know that paste is … paste! In the recipe I used there is a photo of the author using a condiment style squeeze bottle which might work. I also accidentally found, later, in an old box of decorating tips … a very fine tube end. Anyway, I know for next time.
BUT, yes, they were delicious! I actually did not separate the rolls in my 8x8 block (except for that first) … sliced like a loaf of bread and used like toast. This morning, the last 2 slices got the French toast treatment. I love somewhat dried brioche made into French toast and this worked very well.
On to Panettone experimenting … only 8 months until Christmas and I think we need to start prepping 6-8 weeks before
My plan for the panettone prep come September is to try Pandoro. It’s very similar to Panettone but doesn’t have the dried fruit. My victims will be the eaters at my church’s coffee hour.
I’m a total cheapskate and I find myself trying to figure out how to do this without buying special panettone paper baking pans. They seem expensive, unless you buy them by the gross. But maybe I need to look farther than the King Arthur store!
I just tried another treat very similar to Panettone and Pandoro: a “Colomba Pasquale” (Easter Dove). The recipe is almost identical to the Panettone without the raisins, but it is baked in a dove shaped paper mold. It was a great use of your candied orange peel too! I decided upon a recipe from the Italian Master Piergiorgio Giorilli. Here are links to the same recipe and method on two different Italian websites.
I used the recipe from the first link above. The translations for the method were not very clear in that version, so I referred to the method in the other two web pages to help clarify the instructions.
I made two 1kg loaves, the first was a trial run and I used the quick glaze recipe they recommended and then made the second loaf using the Giorilli glaze. Since I did not have any “armelline” (bitter almonds) I just used regular almonds for that ingredient. I really liked the Giorilli glaze so I will be using that for any future bakes. I tried using Belgian pearl sugar to help differentiate it from the Panettone I make, but next time I will probably just use Swedish pearl sugar. The Swedish “pearls” are smaller than the Belgian ones and the Giorilli glaze is already sweet enough and does not need such large chunks of sugar. Here are the photos from my trial run loaf:
I don’t have any photos of my second loaf because my 11.75 inch wooden skewers were not quite long enough and barely strong enough for a 1 kg loaf and I ended up dropping that one on its head while trying to get it inverted between two boxes. It ended up looking pretty wonky! Fortunately it did not harm the flavor (only my pride). I have since purchased some 15" long metal skewers to resolve that issue for the future.
Here is a link to where I got my Colomba molds:
I bought 3 molds for about $17. Sadly, they were pretty spendy, but since I only made a couple for a fun Easter treat, I guess it was still worth it.
I forgot to mention a couple things in my last post.
First, I wanted to use high-gluten flour for my Colomba, like I use on my Panettone. I have have had good luck with General Mills All Trumps High Gluten Flour (14.2% protein), but I didn’t have any handy, so I enriched my bread flour (Dakota Mills Bread Flour, 12.6% protein) with some Hodgson Mills Vital Wheat Gluten (66.7% protein). I used the Gluten Enrichment Calculator that I shared in an earlier post to calculate how much gluten to use. For example, for the first dough I needed 230 g of high gluten flour, so I used 223 g bread flour and 7 g of gluten powder. For the second dough I needed 60 g of high gluten flour, so I used 58 g bread flour and 2 g gluten powder.
Second point, I wanted to mention that the www.lievitonaturale.org website has a nice tutorial on making natural leavened sweet breads such as Panettone, Pandoro and Colomba. Here is a link:
Fortunately it did not harm the flavor (only my pride). I have since purchased some 15" long metal skewers to resolve that issue for the future.