Homemade panettone

UPDATE: I have posted a fully illustrated panettone recipe/tutorial here.

Alright, now that I have given out all my panettone Christmas gifts I can finally post this. This year I decided to make panettone. Panettone for those of you who may not have heard of it is a Italian Christmas bread originating from Milan. It only became popular in the rest of Italy when it was picked up commercially.

At first it was going to be just for us. But then I thought how lovely it would be to give them out to my wonderful friends. (Beckie I made one for you in my heart. Sending a panettone to Boston seemed a little crazy). I found this recipe online and it's in Italian. For some reason anytime I make a traditional Italian dish I feel the need to use a recipe written by an Italian that's in Italian. That was it's as authentic as possible. This lady actually made a great video to go along with the recipe. Without it I don't think I would have been as successful as I was. Here is the practice round, which we are still eating right now.

 It is quite delicious. The thing I learned from this practice round is that when the author says the dough will triple on the third rise, believe her. I didn't and so I put the whole dough into one panettone paper. It looked lovely like the above photo. But then I put it in the oven and it began to grow and grow and grow. I should have taken a picture but I was to busy panicking. It grew up over the sides and down to the baking sheet. I had a good laugh as I tried to save it by cutting off the already baking excess.

Round two turned out like this. These are the panettone that I gave out to three dear friends and one lucky neighbor.  They are not as high as the first one because I cut the batch in half, so I wouldn't have the over growth problem. Needless to say, the second round was really really delicious. My neighbors, one of which was pastry chef and worked for Martha as food editor, and the other a chef at the Ritz here in Tucson, were very impressed and loved it. They said the flavor was spot on and the crumb light and fluffy and just moist enough.  I was quite intimidated at the thought of actually giving them one, but I sucked it up and gave it anyway. I'm glad I did because their compliments were one of the best presents I will receive for this holiday season.

Having bought a set of 12  panettone papers from here, I used 5 in the testing a making of these panettone and  have 7 left. Daniele already wants me to make a panettone with coffee and one with chocolate. I guess there are plenty more panettones in my future. Oh yes, and I forgot to mention it take two days to make these. Not an easy feat to undertake with a toddler. The picture above is what Sofia looked like after we made the panettone together. And I used entirely organic ingredients. Even down to the extracts. No trans fat in this panettone!