Panettone Gastronomico

This year in Italy everybody is baking Panettoni Gastronomici for their festive tables.  This recipe is just amazing, we did it for our New Years Eve party and it was a great success.

It is also an effective way to create special finger food for any party, it does not have to be Christmas!

Please refer to our traditional panettone recipe  to learn more about how to hang the panettone once it is baked.

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Firs Dough:

150g manitoba flour

300g milk

50g very active sourdough starter

Second Dough:

580g manitoba flour

50g very active sourdough starter

15-50 g milk (quantity can vary according to how big are the eggs or the type of flour)

120g butter

60g sugar

2 eggs

2 egg yolks

12g salt

Around 7pm dissolve the sourdough  starter in the milk, then add the flour and work the mix into a batter.

Cover and rest for 12 hours.

At 7 am mix the sourdough starter with the milk, then add the batter that by now will be very bubbly, then add the sugar, eggs, flour and the salt last. After you have an elastic dough add the butter and work it in. Work the dough until it is smooth, silky and elastic. If you are doing it by hand it will take a good half an hour.

If you own a planetary mixer it will take a lot less time and effort!

Work the dough into a ball, put in a sealed tupperware or in bowl inside a big plastic bag and let it rise until tripled in volume, 6 to 8 hours, in a warm environment, like the oven with the light on.

Once your dough has risen, sprinkle your work surface with a little flour and gently tilt your dough onto it.

With a rolling pin flatten the dough into a rectangle then fold it once according to the scheme on the left, rotate of 90 ° and repeat the fold.

Shape the dough into a tight ball.

Panettone has to be hung upside-down for several hours after baking to ensure that it doesn’t collapse in on itself and the homemade mould you see in the picture made this operation quite tricky, so I would recommend buying a panettone paper mould of 1.5 kg or two of 750g.

Once you have shaped your ball or balls, place them at the centre of your panettone mould and  proof for about 6 to 8 hours.

We usually put our panettoni to rise in big food grade plastic bags which we seal with a peg.

When fully proofed, the top of the dome of dough should be about even with the top of the mould. 

Preheat the oven at 180C and bake for about 45 minutes for the 750g mould and 50 for the 1.5 kg mould.

As soon as they are out of the oven, hang the panettoni upside down by inserting bamboo skewers into the bottom of the paper moulds and then resting them between two chairs.

The day after you can store the panettoni in sealed paper bags for a week or so.

Slice and fill according to taste.