“Panettone”

My daddy loved Italian food. It’s his favourite cuisine and he used to travel to Italy for business very often. We would often look forward to his return which would include gifts for all of us; edibles and fashionable seasonal additions to our wardrobe. One of my favourite items that he used to bring back was a Panettone during Christmas time (this was before we had them in supermarkets in Singapore). It is still to this day one of my favourite Christmas food. I love how fluffy it is and the sparsely speckled rum soaked raisins and candied fruits made it delectable.

Recently, I came to a sudden realisation that it is almost 4 months more till Christmas, I suddenly craved for panettone and decided that maybe I should challenge myself; create my own version of this delicious bread.

To be honest, I can’t figure what I should call this new bread, I did toy with labelling it “Panettone X Brioche”? Panettones are technically brioche in terms of their DNA (which made the name sound silly). They are both medium-low in hydration, traditionally a brioche’s hydration comes from eggs and milk, some panettone recipes however use water instead of milk. But the traditional panettone will require them to have skewers pierced through the paper moulds and hung upside down to cool, a little like a chiffon cake. This recipe that I developed is fluffy because it’s higher in hydration (72%) but it is easy to handle as long as you follow the method below. It doesn’t require you to hang it upside down to cool, you can cool it in the bread tin. The end product is a buttery soft bread that has full of flavour, speckled with plump raisins and your kitchen will smell divine. However, be warned. The bread may not last the day if you have kids or 2 days, if it is just 2 of you like in my household.

Recipe

Makes one loaf (8.5″ tin)

Ingredients:
25g Raisins
10g Dark Rum
15g Water
20g Candied Citrus Peel
250g Bread Flour
7g Dry Active Yeast / 36g Sourdough Starter + 1g Dry Active Yeast
1 zest of orange
50g caster sugar
2 eggs
70g lukewarm milk (around 50degC)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3g salt
80g soften butter (butter that you can indent with some resistance)
1 egg (beaten)

Method:

• Add all the items in purple into your milk pan or the smallest pan you have and bring it to a boil. Then turn off the fire and set aside in a bowl until you are ready to use it.

• Combine the items in green in your milk pan.

• Add the items in orange in your mixing bowl of your stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. Mix it on low speed and slowly in a steady stream, pour in your warmed milk mixture. Increase the speed to medium until the ingredients are combined and form a sticky dough like in the video. Rest the dough for 20mins.

• Add the salt in and proceed to mix it till it comes together like a ball and does not stick to the bottom of the bowl like below.

• On a low speed, add the butter a tablespoon at a time and mix till the butter is incorporated like the 2nd video.

• Increase the speed to medium till you get it “slapping the sides” and sticking a little to the bottom like in the video.

• Butter your fingers like in the video and shape the dough into a ball. Place it in a buttered bowl. Cover with a tea towel and allow to rise. The first rise will take around 2 hours to double in size. You need to gauge based on the temperature in your kitchen.

• By then, the dough will not be sticky. Measure the dough and split it into 2 evenly like in the video.

• Shape them into balls and leave them to rest for 15mins.

• Mix your candied citrus peels with the raisins.

• Roll both your balls of dough out, add in the raisins + citrus peels and shape as per the video. Put into the bread tin.

• Preheat the oven to 160degC Fan Forced. Make sure the oven tray is at the bottom and the rack is placed just above it.

• Leave them to rise till they reach the top of the tin.

• Boil some water in your kettle. Meanwhile, egg wash the top of your loaf. Put your loaf in the oven on the rack and pour in 50ml of the hot water into the tray below. Close the oven door. Prepare a piece of aluminium foil to cover the top of the bread. Around the 20th minute mark, your bread should be golden brown on top, cover it with the aluminium foil and let it continue to bake for another 20mins. Your total bake time should be 40mins.

• Remove from the oven and let it cool in the tin.