Panettone in “Se7en + 1” Steps…

For some reason we like to celebrate events with bread… I didn’t know this about us until we started blogging and I realize in the last year we have made countless celebratory breads. Last week we celebrated New Year and along with our New Year Tree:

And little gifts on the tree:

And Panettone…

Let’s Meet the Players: As usual a little something has been left out of the photograph. This is not purposeful, just call it unintentional misfortune!!!

For the bread dough:

• 1 packet of yeast.
• 225ml of warm milk
• 350g plain four
• a pinch of salt

For the filling:

• 115 g soft butter
• 2 egg yolks
• 60 g caster sugar
• 75 g chopped candied citrus peel
• 50 g sultanas
• a pinch of nutmeg
• greated zest of an orange and a lemon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

For finishing:

• one beaten egg yolk mixed with water
• icing sugar to dust

Lets Play the Game:

1. Pop the warm milk into a bowl and add the yeast to it. Leave it for about five minutes and it will froth up.



2. Mix the flour and salt in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center of the dough and pour the yeast/milk mixture into the center of it.



3. Drawing enough of the flour into the yeast/milk mixture to form a paste within the flour bowl. Leave it to froth for about twenty minutes.



4. After twenty minutes mix all the flour and frothy mixture together to form a thick dough. Knead for about twenty minutes. Cover the dough with a tea towel and leave it to rise for about an hour, until it has doubled in size.



5. Meanwhile, line a tall baking pan with paper. I don’t have a tall baking pan so I stacked my two cake pans. Whatever you use to bake your bread in the paper must be placed well above the line of your baking tin because your panettone will rise!!!




6. Also, in a separate bowl, mix together: the butter, the yolks, the candied citrus peel, the nutmeg, the zest and the vanilla.



7. Going back to your risen bread dough, knock it down and then make a hollow and pack your filling into it. Mix it together to make a bread dough. The first time I made it my dough at this stage was really sticky, the second time I added flour to get a stiffer more bread-like dough. The second time our panettone rose so much better. Lesson learnt, you need to add in a bit more flour until it feels right.



8. Make a round loaf with the dough and place it into the prepared pan. Cut a cross in the top of the dough and leave it covered to rise for about two hours. After two hours brush the bread with a glaze of egg mixed with water. Finally, place it in the oven and bake the bread at 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit) for about forty-five minutes. When you stick a skewer into the bread and it comes out clean your bread is ready. After a few minutes take the bread out of the pan and cool it on a rack. Dust it with icing sugar when you are ready to eat it.

And you are done, great to eat like a cake, or sliced like bread. Not to mention fabulous toast or French toast. Yum!!!

When it comes to bread and bread-making most of our recipes come from this fabulous book. Well our recipes start there, most of our recipes adapt and have a mind of their own… but this book is the source of our bread inspiration.

You just can’t beat a Dorling Kindersley Bread Book and this one is fabulous. With the typical photography to set your tummy grumbling there is an extensive section on basic bread techniques and how to just about anything to do with bread. Then it goes on to breads around the world and celebratory breads. This is the sort of book you are forced to oohhh and aaahhh over and then it inspires you because it is full of things you didn’t realize you can actually do. We love it!!!

P.S. DK Books does not pay us to say such nice things – I don’t think they even know we exist!!!