Perfecting panettone for the holidays

Christmas baking traditions die hard. Take my annual December output of stollen, that German holiday bread full of walnuts and raisins and drizzled with a confectioners' sugar glaze.

After nearly 30 years of dragging home pounds of nuts and golden raisins from the Strip, bags of powdered sugar from the grocery and staying up late waiting for the stollens to finally be done, I needed something new to bake for the holidays, and discovered it in the Italian tradition from Milan -- panettone.

When I acquired two new bread books this year -- "The Italian Baker (Revised)" by Carol Field and Ed Anderson (Ten Speed Press, $35) and "The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking" by the French Culinary Institute (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, $65) -- I found the inspiration to refine my original recipe and turn out exceptional panettoni, fresher and more sophisticated than those imported from Italy in cardboard boxes.

My initial recipe was created by Jim Lahey for the December 2008 issue of the late and still-mourned Gourmet magazine. At the time, Mr. Lahey, owner of The Sullivan St. Bakery, was the darling of New York food writers. Gourmet embraced his celebrity as well and reproduced his panettone.

The gimmick to his panettone was the use of a tiny ( 1/2 teaspoon) amount of yeast and exceptionally long (12 to 15 hours) rising or initial fermentation stage. The Gourmet recipe directed you to place the dough in a cold oven for that time, assuming, I guess, that we all had more than one oven and could afford to tie one up for that long.

I found that the effects of this technique resulted in a flavorful, but dense bread that rose only slightly even after 15 hours and needed almost two hours to bake.

I changed the recipe by using bread flour instead of all-purpose and 1 1/2 teaspoons of SAF Gold instant yeast that works best with sweet doughs. It's called "osmotolerant." I kneaded the dough in a stand mixer for 15 minutes using a dough hook to develop more gluten.

The changes improved the bread considerably. It was easier to handle, rose faster without imprisonment in a cold oven and baked in just over an hour. The panettone was airy, moist and redolent of vanilla.

The recent baking books led to more upgrades in the panettone production. Their recipes were more complex and challenging than Mr. Lahey's recipe, and the breads were worth the work, both head and shoulders above the Lahey product even after my improvements.

These recipes are not for casual bakers; they are advised to use the Lahey recipe with my refinements. The recipes also call for panettone baking molds made of lined paper. I found mine at Pennsylvania Macaroni in the area where bread is sold.

Traditional panettone is a yeast bread full of eggs, sugar and butter -- really a brioche with dried fruit and citrus flavoring. It has a long shelf life. Ms. Field says the Italians save a few slices from Christmas to eat on Feb. 3, the feast day of St. Biagio, the protector of the throat.

The Italians consume more than 100 million panettoni, adds Ms. Field, who has traced its origins to the 15th century when a poor baker named Antonio created the bread, hence the name, pan di Tonio. Apocrophal, maybe, but panettone is a Christmas standard no matter how it earned its name.

I baked four different panettoni this month in search of the best version, then offered samples to three tasters, two of whom are experienced bakers and the third who is an eager consumer of their baked goods. The winner was the recipe from the French Culinary Institute, with Ms. Field's a close second.

My fourth -- from the Wild Yeast blog -- was a serious effort that required two days in the making. Like the French Culinary Institute's, it calls for a mature "levain" or naturally created leavener that takes a week or so to make and regular "feedings" of flour and water to maintain.