Easy Panettone Recipe | Italian Christmas Bread

Bold Bakers today I'm going to show you how to make a beautiful Italian panettone which is a classic around the holidays. The first thing you want to do when making a panettone is making a starter the day before. Here I have some all-purpose flour, into that I'm going to add in a little bit of instant yeast so you don't have to sponge it. And then into this we add some lukewarm water. Now if you're new to bread making and have never made a starter before. So the reason that you make a starter is because you know it helps to develop flavor overnight just like when you're making a sourdough. It ferments and it feeds off the wild yeast in the air which develops more flavor and gives you a lovely rise. So we do this little step the day before we want our panettone. That is our starter, very simple. We cover it with a little bit of cling wrap and let this sit out at room temperature overnight so roughly around 12 hours minimum. It's going to sit here do its thing and then we can make our bread the next day. So I have my starter ready it fermented overnight. I have all my ingredients for the panettone. So now we're going to finish making our dough. So here I have my stand mixer. You know it's helpful if you have a stand mixer for this recipe but you can also do it by hand if you have to. I'm going to put in some all-purpose flour. Here we have some granulated sugar in there. Salt as always and some instant yeast. I'm just going to put the yeast on the other side of the bowl away from the salt because salt can deactivate yeast. I'm going to give those a little mix together. Combine the dry. Lovely. We always want to just combine the dry ingredients together first so everything is like really evenly mixed. And then to this we are going to add in our cold cubed butter. Now what we're going to do our dough hook as we're mixing this dough is going to break up this butter. Rub it in essentially just like we would a pie crust or biscuits. It's going to break it up into small bits and big bits and that's exactly what we want. So once your butter is rubbed in it'll look just like this. Just like if you were making a crumble. Lovely. Now let's talk about our wet ingredients that are going to go in here. Here I have my starter which has our yeast and smells lovely and boozy. Into the starter I'm going to add in our eggs. Like I said this is an enriched dough and that's how we have the butter in there and we have the eggs and some warm water. And lastly an ingredient that is very popular in Italy Fiore da Sicilia. Now I love to use Rodelle's one of these. The flavor is gorgeous. The Rodel Fiore da Sicilia is a combination of vanilla, orange and then also floral essence. So it's really just lovely and like packs really good flavor. So I'm going to add splashes out in here too. Now I'm going to whisk these ingredients together. Now what we're going to do is add this wet into our dry and knead it on the machine. Kind of like a medium speed for around four to five minutes or so. Your dough will come together. It'll be lovely and smooth and kind of you know elasticy. What we're doing right now is developing the gluten because panettone is famous a little bit like a brioche for those lovely long gluten strands and when you cut it or you put it on better to pull it apart you get these lovely thin layers of gluten and this is exactly what we want. And that's it. It's done. Our dough has been kneaded. It is a soft dough. Look at that. It does come together to form a ball but it is a little bit on the wetter side. So what I'm going to do now is pop this dough into an oiled bowl and it's oiled because it will help it to proof as it's proofing it will just glide up the bowl so much easier. I'm going to cover it in cling wrap and make an extra snug with a little tea towel. Now let me tell you something about this dough. It takes quite a bit of time to proof because it's quite a heavy dough so it could be a little bit on the sluggish side. So you're talking a minimum of an hour and a half to let it proof at this stage. It could take up to two hours. When you come back it will be lovely and risen. Nice and puffy and then we can go ahead and go on to our next step. We're going to leave this at room temperature right now and let it do its thing. So I gave it lots of time and look at this. Beautiful. I love an enriched dough. So it has risen up a lot. If you pull your dough you can see all the gluten that has formed. Lovely. So the last step is adding in your fruit and here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to mix it up beforehand and then add it to our dough because it's much easier that way. So we have some dried cranberries. We have saltanas which don't freak out if you're wondering what saltanas are. They're golden raisins. You can also use raisins if you don't have sultanas. I don't know. I love the color of sultanas. We have chopped up apricots there, dried apricots. Citrus peel, candied peel. This is a very common ingredient in Europe in our holiday baking. We used a lot in Ireland. If you can't find that in your country you can make your own at home. I have a recipe for that on my website biggerbolderbaking.com. Next we're going to add in some orange zest to give you those lovely citrus vibes and some lemon zest also for citrus vibes. Now just give these a mix. Mixing it up first is better than just adding it to your dough. Just means that your fruit is evenly kind of dispersed throughout and you don't end up with just like one big lump of cranberries. So here I have my dough. Look at that. Every last bit. Now this is the fun part really. It's just about kneading. It's about kneading all of this fruit into the dough. So go ahead and fold it in as best you can. I don't have any flour on my surface right now. Just knead and knead all the way throughout. I'm going to put a little bit of flour on now. I didn't want it earlier because I wanted the dough to get traction on the countertop. Beautiful. Look at that. So I get asked the question is there a wrong way to knead something? And the good thing is is there kind of isn't you know. Just use your hands, turn your dough to combine in your ingredients or just to like stretch your dough and just like move it around onto the palm of your hands. I have so many bread videos on my channel that you can check out if you're looking to just like really nail your technique and it's really not hard. So what we want is just as you're kneading turn it around turn over your dough. We're looking for a lovely smooth top to our dough and underneath that is increased that's nice and then your top is lovely and smooth just like that. Now, Panettone is famous for these lovely papers. So we're going to pop our dough into one of these. I got these on Amazon. I'll also link those on my website. Now what we're going to do is cover up this dough. If your kitchen is lovely and warm then it is perfect. We are going to let this proof and rise up as much as it can. Now just a reminder like I said before for rising this is a sluggish dough. It does need sometimes you're talking around an hour and a half to two hours. If your kitchen is nice and toasty then you're like in good shape. So I gave my Panettone a good two hours and it definitely benefited from it. Look at it. It rose almost to the top of the paper. It is nice and soft under my fingers and I can see bubbles there. So this is perfect. The last thing I'm going to do before I put it into the oven. I'm just going to egg wash it very gently. We don't want to deflate it. I just want to get a lovely golden brown top. Egg wash will make it lovely and shiny. Now perfect. Then I'm going to gently place it onto a baking tray. My oven has preheated so let's get it in there. Okay so for the baking start your Panettone at 400 degrees Fahrenheit 200 degrees Celsius for 10 minutes. Then turn down the temperature to 375 degrees Fahrenheit 190 degrees Celsius for 10 more minutes. Then turn it down to 350 degrees Fahrenheit 180 degrees Celsius for around 15 minutes or so. Want to get a lovely golden brown but not too dark. Our Panettone is out of the oven and it looks and smells amazing. I am so delighted with this. So definitely let it cool down before you serve it. Well once it is cold you can dust it with some powdered sugar as it's traditionally served and then slice into it. You can definitely see by looking at it why it is called cake of luxury. It is full of beautiful dried fruit perfect for the holiday season and enriched dough with butter and eggs and that lovely fiori di sicilia. It is such a fragrant bread and has so much going on. You always see Panettone around the holiday season but you really can have this any time of year. Just look at this beautiful crumb and the texture of the bread. It's so delicious. You know some loving care goes into this bread but it is well worth it. If you enjoyed this recipe then stick around. I've got hours more content for you to check out. Thanks so much for watching and I'll see you back here again really soon.