Panettone

Panettone is a traditional Italian Christmas bread just like Stollen in Germany. I was first introduced to this bread when J Guisippes came to our Christmas party and brought us a Panettone Paluani and I fell in love with it.

This is my first trial in baking a panettone and I quite like the result of this recipe. For this panettone, I used the poolish preferment as my starter.






Windowpane test - if you can stretch your dough into a paper-thin translucent membrane then you have passed the test.


Ingredients:
Poolish:
85g plain flour
90ml lukewarm water
1/8 tsp instant yeast

Main dough:
a) 2 yolks about 30g lightly beaten
b) 60g melted butter
c) 20ml dark rum
d) 0.5 tsp vanilla essence
e) 50g sugar + 10g milk powder dissolved in 80ml warm water
f) All of the poolish
g) 245g plain flour + 1.5 tsp instant yeast

Dried Fruits:
100g raisins
45g mixed peels
25g cranberries
1 tsp fresh lemon zest
1 tsp fresh orange zest

Method:
1. The night before combine all ingredients for the poolish in a big mixing bowl, cover with a glad wrap and leave it to ferment in a cool dry place for 12 - 16 hours.
2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together (a) - (e) with a balloon whisk till smooth. Add in (f) which is all the poolish and beat till well-combined and smooth.
3. Pour all this into the bread machine then add in (g) and start the dough cycle. Let the bread machine doing the mixing and kneading. Once the kneading is done, do the windowpane dough test, otherwise knead for a few more minutes manually till you achieve the windowpane state. If you do not have a bread machine, you have to do this part manually.
4. Add in the dried fruits and knead till they are incorporated.
5. Shape dough into a large ball, place it in a bowl greased with corn oil. Turn the dough all around to coat all sides of the dough with oil. Cover with glad wrap and rest dough for 2 hours in a cool dry place.
6. Divide dough into desired weights and put them into appropriately sized pan or muffin cups. Place them in a covered area to rise for 2 hours.
7. Bake at 170C - 175C for 20 - 25 minutes or till golden brown and cooked.

Notes:
The paper cups I used are very tall, they are about 7cm in height and 5.5cm in diameter. I used about 110g dough for each cup and had a little dough left over which is insufficient for this tall cup. The height of the baked panettone is about 8.5cm.

I fermented my panettone for 2 hours at 21C which was the room temperature in Hong Kong this afternoon. If the room temperature is higher, you might need less fermentation time.