Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Christmas panettone

Panettone

What's a holiday without some outlandish baking project?

I got the recipe for this panettone from my trusty Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. It seemed appropriately over-the-top. And while not quite as easy as my daily bread, it was a cinch as far as outlandish holiday baking goes. (You can find the recipe over at their blog.)

The dough smelled amazing, but was threatening to overflow my 19-cup-capacity bucket. Oops.

Chilled panettone dough

This morning, with the dough appropriately chilled, I scooped out a handful and tried desperately to form a gluten cloak. The recipe called for the usual shaping, pulling the dough around to the sides until a gluten cloak forms. This stuff was so sticky, the whole idea of shaping was a joke. It ended up just getting dumped in the molds, helter-skelter.

Dough in panettone mold

Then they're supposed to "rest" for an hour and forty minutes. When I do this stuff with regular bread dough, it rises during this "rest" period, especially dough that's in a loaf pan.

Before rising

But this dough hardly rose at all. So I was getting a little worried....

After "rising"

But the oven seemed to do the trick.

Panettones in the oven

And now... ta-da!

Full-height view of panettone

Full disclosure: I have not tasted this yet. But seriously, how could it be bad? They're gorgeous.

I can definitely see this becoming a holiday tradition. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Panettone

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