Panettone

 

Introduction:

The holidays are behind us now so I wanted to get this post up before it gets too far away. I don't make sweet breads all that often but I really love panettone, with its fluffy mild sweetness and fresh citrus aroma. Every Christmas for the past few yeas I have tried to make panettone, and every year I have failed (or if you are an optimist you could say I succeeded in making some tasty little yellow bricks). This year was much the same, but I came closer to an acceptable result than ever before, and I may try again in the coming weeks if I am not completely sick of it by the time I go through all of those little yellow bricks in my freezer.

Materials and Methods:

I knew I was going to need some candied orange peel* and raisins so I used:

Raisins Liquor Oranges Water Sugar

Volume 1 cup some 3 3/4 cup 1 1/2 cups

*this will make way more than you need, but keep it around for back-up

• Cover the raisins with liquor and let soak overnight. I used a mix of spiced rum and red vermouth.
• Peel the oranges & dice the peels into little cubes.
• Blanch the peels in 3 changes of boiling water to remove some of the bitterness
• Simmer in the mixture of water and sugar
• Eat the oranges

Once I had that I was ready to bake. I tried a few different  protocols this year. I had made a batch of brioche from the Crust and Crumb book that came out really well, so I started with Reinhart's method. Since the panettone dough is very similar to a brioche with added fruit and flavors I was very hopeful that this would be the one.

Oh... I almost forgot to mention, with all these recipes you will need to put an aluminum foil tent over the loaf as it bakes or the top will burn (at least in my oven).  

The Reinhart procedure:

*from Crust and Crumb by Peter Reinhart

• Make a yeasted pre-ferment (a.k.a. sponge):

Bread Flour Yeast Milk*

Volume 3/4 cup 2 tsp 1 cup

Mass

Percentage 100% 7% 228.5%

* the book calls for buttermilk but I didn't have any

• Mix and let ferment at room temperature 1-2 h until bubbly (I probably should have let this bubble more. It was not very warm & I did not incubate this one)
• Then make the dough:

Bread Flour Sugar Salt Eggs Butter* Sponge

Volume 4 1/3 cups 1/3 cup 1 tsp 5 1/2 cup all from above

Mass

Percentage 100% 11.5% 1.3% 41% 20.5% 60%

* the book calls for unsalted but I had salted

•  Mix together all the ingredients and fold in the orange peel and raisins (I used 1/2 cup of each but should have used more... I added a tsp of lemon extract as well)
• Knead by hand for at least 15m until gluten is fully developed
• Cover and rest for 1.5h until 1.5x in size
• Split into loaf size portions and place into the container you want to bake it in. Be sure to apply a liberal coat of butter to the sides to avoid sticking.
• Rest for another 1.5h until 2x in size.
• Bake at 350F until the internal temp. reaches 185F.

Results:

So this didn't work out very well (Fig.1). I mean it tasted good, but it wasn't at all the texture of panettone. The recipe also called for a sugar glaze on top so I just used the leftover liquid from making the candied orange peel and threw in a bit of the liquor from the raisins. Don't do this (at least with the alcohol). It just leaves a sticky mess on top of the loaf.
   

Figure 1. Showing one of the little yellow bricks that I got from the Reinhart procedure.

Conclusions:

I'll take responsibility for this one failing. I knew it hadn't risen enough, yet I blindly followed the directions anyway. I also used salted butter, and the extra salt could conceivably reduce the yeast activity, but that usually isn't such a big deal. I suspect I could get this recipe to work. I think it all just needs to rise for WAY longer than it says in the manual. If I ever try this again I will try to keep the dough at >75F when rising, and just let it rise until it feels right rather than paying any attention to the suggested rising times.

I also don't quite know what to think about the affect of using a higher protein bread flour here. On one hand it could make sense if the higher gluten content can help it maintain its form after a big rise. But on the other hand the extra protein might make that rise harder to achieve. Anyway, it didn't really rise at all, but its something to think about, especially considering that the other recipes I tested all use all purpose (AP) flour.
 

The KAFprocedure:

* from King Arthur himself

• This recipe also used a yeasted pre-ferment  (here they call it a biga):

AP Flour Yeast Water

Volume 3/4 cup a pinch 1/3 cup

Mass 3 1/8 oz 2 5/8 oz

Percentage 100% 84%

• Mix and let ferment overnight at room temperature.(this should triple overnight)
• Then make the dough:

AP Flour Water Salt Eggs Butter* Biga Sugar Lemon extract Orange peel Raisins

Volume 2 1/4 cups 1/4 cup 1 1/4 tsp 2 1/4 cup all from above 1/3 cup 1/2 tsp 1 cup 1 cup

Mass 9 1/2 oz 2 oz 2 oz 2 1/4 oz 5 oz 5 oz

Percentage 100% 21% 21% 23% 53% 53%

• Mix together all the ingredients except for the fruit
• Knead by hand for at least 15m until gluten is fully developed
• Cover and rest for 1 - 2h. (I didn't see much rise here so I left it in the fridge for a full work day... when I got home it had risen to about 3x its original volume)
• Gently fold in the fruit
• Split into loaf size portions and place into the container you want to bake it in. If not using panettone molds be sure to apply a liberal coat of butter to the sides to avoid sticking. (The awesome all day rise was reduced by the handling here)
• Rest for another 1 - 2h.
• Bake at 350F for 45min or until the internal temp. reaches 185F.

Results:

*photo not available... it was eaten too quickly

This was much closer to what I was after. The flavor was good and the amount of fruit was right, but it was still too dense. It was certainly an improvement over my previous attempt but the good rise I got from the overnight fermentation and a full day in the fridge was lost when I shaped the loaves.

Conclusions:

This recipe could definitely work, but I would shape the loaves before leaving them to rise for a full day in the fridge. Then leave them out at room temp for a few hours before baking. So close... but yet so far.

The Wild Yeast method:

* from the Wild Yeast Blog see also Wild Yeast 2012

I had seen this recipe a while back but was consciously avoiding it because it looked so complicated. This recipe begins with what she calls a sweet starter (basically a 50% hydration sourdough starter), and then has some instant yeast added to that to raise the dough, so it uses a mix of natural and commercial leavening.

• To build the sweet starter I took a 20g portion of my 100% hydration starter and fed it with 20g of flour and 10g of water.  
• Feed with a 20g/20g/10g mix of starter/flour/water for a few days prior to building the dough
• The night before you will start building the dough, feed with 50g/50g/25g to increase the volume

• Start building the 1st dough the day before you want to bake:

AP Flour Water Yeast Sugar Egg yolks Brown Sugar* Butter** Sweet starter

Volume

Mass 346g 190g 1g 83g 55g 7g 83g 86g

Percentage 100% 55% 0.2% 24% 16% 2% 24% 25%

*called for diastatic malt powder....???

** again you are supposed to use unsalted butter

• Mix the first dough and let ferment overnight at room temperature.(this should triple overnight [Fig. 2] )

 

Figure 2. The first dough after a good overnight rise. Notice all the tiny little bubbles just under the surface. Looking good so far.

• The next day make the final dough:

AP Flour Water Salt Egg yolks Butter* Honey Sugar Lemon extract Orange peel Raisins

Volume 1/2 tbs

Mass 82g 114g 5g 25g 126g 19g 82g 170g 126g

Percentage 100% 139% 6% 30% 154% 23% 100% 207% 154%

• Mix together all the ingredients except for the water, fruit, butter and sugar.
• Mix in 40g of the water
• Once it is roughly combined add the sugar gradually in 4-5 increments
• Fold the dough until the gluten is almost fully developed 
• Add the butter

This is where something went majorly wrong for me. I had to keep my hand kind of wet to keep the sticky dough from sticking to my fingers while I was folding it and I think I ended up incorporating too much water because it turned to a thin batter after I added the butter. Now, I admit I did not use 'softened' butter like she suggested, instead I just melted it in a pan & cooled it down. But this was REALLY wet and I was still supposed to add another 74g of water! Instead of doing that I...

• added X g of flour until it started to resemble dough again (where X = like 2-3 cups but I was pretty frustrated and didn't bother to measure).
• Fold in the fruit until well incorporated
• Place in a large oiled bowl to rise
• Ferment for 1-2h. Folding every 30m
• Divide dough into loaf sized peices and form into balls.
• Place in buttered baking containers (unless you have actual panettone molds)
• Proof for another 12h at room temperature.

Here again I ran into a problem. After 12h of proofing I saw barely any rise (Fig. 3). At this point I was not very optimistic.

Figure 3. A very disappointing overnight rise :(

It was December and my place gets pretty cold at night which probably explains this, but I learned my lesson from the Reinhart method so I left it out at room temp for the day while I was at work to see what would happen. I was also concerned that leaving the loaves out for so long would dry them out on top so I placed each one in an inflated ziplock bag to give it a sealed & humid environment (Fig. 4).

Figure 4. In situ panettone incubation chamber

When I got home the loaves had risen beautifully in their little pyrex bowls (Fig. 5) & were ready to bake!

Figure 5. Its ALIVE!!!

• Bake the loaves at 350 for 35-40 minutes until the internal temp is ~190F (this was a bit of a problem for me too because the bottoms definitely got too dark baking for this long... but I think this is mainly bc I bake in a toaster oven so the dough is practically sitting on the heating element. I will try a little lower temp next time).

 

Results:

Success! The added rising time did the trick and the loaves sprung up in the oven even more (Fig. 6). The crust was a rich dark brown from the caramelization of the sugars (it almost looks burnt in Fig. 4 but is was really just right IMHO).

Figure 6. They rose! The one in the back was kind of a dud, but that is b/c I left it in the fridge while the other two were incubating at room temp. Object in this photo appear darker than they actually were. Don't you like the little blistery bumps on the crust... so cool. Just like real panettone!

The texture was... OKAY! (Fig. 7) And that is fine with me (for now). The crumb was nice and light with plenty of little air pockets. It wasn't as fluffy and shredy as store bought panettone and more bigger air pockets would be an improvement, but after all this I will take what I can get here.

Figure 7. In which you can see the nice light texture and airy crumb. The fruit all ended up on one side for some reason & the bottom got a little singed in the toaster, but it tastes oh so good!

 

Conclusions:

This recipe was A LOT of work and I had a couple scary moments when I thought I had ruined the whole thing (in fact I almost pitched it when it turned to soupy goo). I think this might be the one though. I will certainly try this again if not this year, then next. And I'd really like to find out what I did wrong in the middle there???