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Today we are going to present a very important recipe: Panettone! And the good news is that we are going to make it together with the famous Italian Pastry Chef Francesco Favorito! But first of all, let’s start with some characteristics of the product.Characteristics
Panettone is considered the King of the Italian pastries! It is a sweet bread loaf originally from Milan and it is usually prepared for Christmas and New Year holidays.
It is the most “noble”, the pride of Italian cuisine in the world. It is so famous and important that there specific laws that protects its name!
It’s a quite complex preparation that relies on a subtle equilibrium between all the components and preparation steps. It requires big quantities of eggs, butter, sugar and candied fruits. All these ingredients of course enrich the flavour and give the unique characteristics, but they also make the preparation very complex. We will need a very active and balanced sourdough starter.
Anyway, I am very proud today to have the Pastry Chef Francesco Favorito with us. He will guide us through all the steps helping the preparation with photos and videos.
Let’s give the floor to our friend Francesco!
___________________________________IL PANETTONE CLASSICO CON LIEVITO MADRE E PATATE
di Francesco Favorito
Good evening everybody, for me it’s an honour to share my pastries knowledge with you.
In 2017 will be 40 years that I have been producing this wonderful pastry and every time it is an immense pleasure seeing it rising. I recently assessed a new gluten free croissant with a new type of sugar created in an innovative way here, in Italy, that it will revolutionize the pastries! “Viva l’Italia” (Go on Italy!).To make a good Panettone we will need:
- A kneading machine with minimum 1200 watts power. We will use mainly the dough hook, but if the dough becomes too soft we will switch to the beater, to help the gluten network develop.
- A good thermometer. We will not use it for the dough temperature, but for the room temperature in our rising chamber. The rising chamber can be our oven, but we need to keep an eye its internal temperature.
- A good weighing scale. Weigh all the ingredients before and precisely.
- A GOOD SOURDOUGH STARTER. Don’t worry, if we prepare our sourdough starter properly, it will do its job wonderfully.
- A lot of passion, but I’m sure you have it. I met some of you at the convention at Igea Marina and I hope to meet you again! Good luck with the preparation!
First of all we will start from the procedure to prepare our sourdough starter and bring it to its full strength. I will use the typical amounts of a bakery, but you can reduce them to your needs. We will use a solid sourdough starter, which means you need to remember that it will have some waste. Take it into account in your calculations. Also the timings are suitable for a bakery, but there is no reason to not changing them.Sourdough starter preparation (8 hours)
5 am: Take the sourdough starter out of the fridge (2000 grams). Leave it at room temperature for 30 minutes. Clean the starter from the outer layers, slice it and soak it into a warm water bath (38 °C). Use a very clean bowl (stainless steel is better). Soak it for 30/45 minutes, depending on how much you want to increase the pH (remove acidity).
6 am: Take 1000 grams of the starter, cleaned from the outer layers, squeeze out as much water as you can and add 1000 grams very strong white flour (W350, or protein content >13.5%) and 400 grams of water. Mix and knead, then cover it with a cloth. Keep it in a rising chamber at 28°/30° C with 65/75% humidity. The sourdough starter needs to double its volume. You can work with “spy” method, which means getting a small portion of starter and keep it in a cylindrical container. Put the container in the same rising chamber as the main starter and use it as an indication of the volume. It should take 3.5/4 hours.
9:30 am: Take the sourdough starter, clean it from the outer layers and soak it in water at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
10 am: Take 1000 grams of the starter, squeeze out the water, and add 2000 grams flour and 800 grams water. Wait for the volume to double.
1:30 pm: Take 1000 grams of the starter, add 2000 grams of flour, 800 grams of water and knead it. Then take 2000 grams and place it back in the fridge. The remaining starter (1800 grams) goes into the rising chamber at 28°/30° C with 75% humidity. At more or less 4.30 pm it will be ready to use.
The following recipe will be with the amounts for exactly one panettone. The aroma flavour it is not an artificial flavour, it is home made. We will talk about it later. Here the recipe:Ingredients
First dough:
White flour (W350, or protein content >13.5%) ___ 245 gr
Boiled mash potato ___ 45 gr
Sugar ___ 90 gr
Egg yolk ___ 80 gr
Milk ____ 8 gr
Sourdough starter ___ 90 gr
Butter ___ 80 gr
Water ___ 90 gr
TOTAL ___ 278 gr
Second dough:
First dough ___ 278 gr
White flour (W350, or protein content >13.5%) ___ 45 gr
Whole eggs ___ 15 gr
Egg yolk ___ 10 gr
Butter ___ 40 gr
Raisins ___ 145 gr
Salt ___ 2 gr
Cocoa butter ___ 15 gr
Aroma flavour ___ 15 gr
Candied orange and citron ___ 100 gr
Sugar ___ 30 gr
TOTAL ___ 1145 grProcedure
3 pm: Boiling potatoes.
Boil the potates until they are completely soft, remove the skin and mash them.
4.20 pm: prepare the raisins.
Wash the raisins because it is often pre-treated with Vaseline or sulphur dioxide (reacts with water and becomes sulphuric acid). Flavour the raisins with a liquor: rum, marsala … etc.
4.30 pm: weigh ingredients for the first dough
Weigh all the ingredients required for the first dough.
Add the ingredients in the kneading machine bowl with the following order:
- Sourdough starter and boiled potatoes, a little bit of butter and knead together.
- Add the flour, sugar, salt, egg yolk and milk.
- Add the water, slowly, up to 75% of the total quantity. The potato will already start softening the dough.
- Knead for about 20 minutes.
- In the last 5 minutes slowly add the remaining water.
- As a last thing, add the butter which was previously left at room temperature to reach a temperature of 25-30 °C.
When you finish the dough should be homogenous and smooth.
5.15 pm: Rising
Place the dough in a plastic container and put into the rising chamber at 26-27 °C with 70/75% humidity. If you instead keep in an open space cover the container with a lid or cling film. Make sure your container is large enough to contain at least three times the initial volume of the dough.
Use the “spy” method explained above to know when the volume it is three times the starting volume. It should take more or less 12 hours.
Do not anticipate the next step. Wait for the proper volume. Anticipating might lead to a closed crumb in the final product.
6.30 am of the day after: final dough.
Weigh all the ingredients. Add to the kneading machine in the following order:
- First dough
- Flour
- Flavours.
- Knead all together and when you have a smooth dough add egg yolks, whole eggs and kned further.
- when the dough is compact and smooth add the sugar
- add the butter that was previously soften at room temperature, the cocoa butter liquid or powder. You could add 1% soy lecithin, liquid or powder.
- When you have finished adding the butter, pour the candied fruits and the raisins, already washed and flavoured with a liquor.
When you have a nice, strong, smooth gluten network move your dough on a working table and do some folding.
Place in the paper moulds and let it rise until it reaches 1 cm below the top border.
Bake in an oven (no convection) for 60 minutes at 165 °C. The inner temperature should be 93°C at the end of baking.
Here some pictures of other forum members that tried this recipe. Enjoy!
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Panettone - Let’s make it together with Pastry Chef Francesco Favorito |
